By Jonathan Baker and Shannon Duer, EGC’s Senior Social Media Manager Fragmentation in media, where mass audiences are splintered into small, niche groups because of dramatic additions to content choices across platforms, has been top-of-mind among marketers. Much discussion of fragmentation has focused on connected television, the latest coverage given to sports programming. Fragmentation is also impacting social media. Stats on the State of Social Media The status of favorite social media platforms revealed some surprising findings, according to a recent EMARKETER report. Citing findings from Buffer, the findings point to an overall unevenness in engagement on social media in 2025 due fragmentation. Here are three examples: Instagram: Very sharp declines (by 26 percent), despite a high median engagement rate. Facebook: Increased 11 percent (year-over-year) to 5.6 percent. TikTok: Relatively minor increase, growing from 3 percent to 4.5 percent (year-over-year). To illustrate how fragmentation is impacting social media, the EMARKETER report featured this graph of Instagram’s trajectory from several years ago, to today, and potential future… Taking a more in-depth look at this shift, by platform… Instagram The report states that a structural shift is taking place on Instagram. The amount of time users spend on the platform has been growing, but at a slower pace. Accenting this is a decline in engagement. Whereas Instagram’s strength was once based on interactions between friends and followers, this has given way to the platform becoming more driven by recommendations and discovery. Facebook Predictions are that Facebook’s status will remain relatively unchanged, with users spending approximately 17 minutes on the platform. (Additional projections point to the possibility of a year-over-year 2.9 percent decline in 2027.) Despite this finding, the time spent on this platform is still primarily devoted to the main signals of engagement that include likes, reactions, and shares. TikTok For a while, TikTok was ‘the only game in town’ for creating, sharing, and discovering short-form mobile videos. Now, the app competes with similar offerings from Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Time on TikTok is predicted to slightly decrease this year, and again in 2027. Overall, engagement has been, as stated in EMARKETER, ‘normalized.’ Too Much of a Good Thing? Essentially, the fragmentation in social media may be traced to the number of platforms. While users once spent a great deal of time on one or two sites, there is a wider variety for them to divide their time, attention, and engagement. Takeaways and Tips Where social media is concerned, marketers have operated ‘cross-platform’ strategies to ensure their brands receive as much visibility as possible. This must now be extended to ‘platform-specific’ strategies, where content is customized to match the unique audience, culture, and other aspects of each platform. Shannon Duer, Senior Social Media Manager at EGC Group, offered these suggestions for developing ‘platform-specific’ strategies: Customize captions and messaging to match the tone and expectations of each platform Adapt creative assets and formats (short-form video, carousels, static graphics, etc.) based on what performs best natively Optimize platform algorithms to maximize reach, engagement, and discoverability Shannon’s tips are proof of how EGC’s team of social media experts constantly monitor the changes to Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok (not to mention Pinterest and LinkedIn, among other sites), and how they impact advertising on these platforms. Don’t be discouraged by increasing fragmentation on these sites to promote your brand. Visit our Social Media Mastery page to learn more about these capabilities, including how we approach audience insights and engagement strategies, which can help navigate any changes (including fragmentation). Let EGC help keep your brand’s social media presence strong. Connect with us today.
