Instagram engagement is down: here’s what’s happening and what to do about it

If you’ve been managing a brand account on Instagram for more than a couple of years and you find yourself looking at your posts and thinking “we used to get so much more engagement than this” — you’re not imagining it, you’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re definitely not alone. Whether we like it or not, the shift is real and it’s something that has been building gradually since around 2020 and has become impossible to ignore since 2024. Almost everyone who has been consistently active on the platform for that long has noticed it and has had to adjust to the new “rules”.

I’ve been managing social media for food, drink, and wellness brands for several years now (multiple client accounts across different categories, sizes, and audiences — including my own account), and at this point, I have seen a bit of everything, including what IG was like between 2017 and 2019 and how things changed after that. I’ve had to adapt the way I work and the way I measure results more times than I can count and this post includes the most straightforward version of what I’ve learned, with data to back it up.

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What engagement looked like before (and why it mattered)

Until around 2019/early 2020, the comment section on Instagram was one of the most useful places on the platform. Yes, getting a lot of comments was nice and one of those things that would turn your day around, but it wasn’t just that. Comments (think proper chats, people asking questions, readers learning new things and getting curious, long-time followers supporting your work and letting you know) were a real indicator that something was working and they were also the place where things actually happened.

Regular commenters became familiar faces, conversations started under posts and moved to DMs, and some of those DMs turned into client relationships. Some of those clients talked about the brand to other people, while other followers never bought anything but built a layer of trust and social proof that made the account feel alive and more credible to anyone who looked at it for the first time. And at a platform level, all of that visible interaction (comments, likes, replies) was actively telling Instagram that the content deserved to reach more people.

It was also, honestly, a mood booster. There was something about posting and seeing a wave of comments from people you recognised that made the work feel worthwhile in a way that’s harder to replicate now. I hear this from almost everyone who was active during that era. That version of Instagram was 100% a real thing and it was a completely different platform compared to what we have now in 2026.

What changed and the data that shows it

The shift didn’t happen overnight. It started somewhere around early 2020, accelerated during the difficult months that followed, and has continued ever since. The numbers now confirm what marketing professionals have been observing from the inside for years.

According to Buffer‘s 2026 analysis of over 52 million posts, Instagram’s median engagement rate fell from approximately 7.3% in 2024 to approximately 5.4% in 2025 — a 26% decline that moved Instagram from first place to third among major platforms. Socialinsider‘s data across 35 million posts puts the year-over-year decline at 24%, with the platform-wide average engagement rate being at 0.48% in Q1 2026.

If you were consistently active in 2018 or 2019 and compare those numbers to now, the gap is significant (just to give you an idea, I remember being able to have a steady 10.5% average engagement rate in those years — it was still an impressive number even then, but it’s more impressive now). What hasn’t changed is that people are still on the platform: Instagram crossed 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025, and users worldwide spend on average more than 30 minutes a day on it, rising to over 50 minutes for the 18-24 age group. They’re watching (as I always tell my clients), but they are not interacting at anywhere near the same rate.

The challenging months of 2020 and 2021 are likely part of the explanation. When everyone’s life changed overnight and people had more time online, content volume exploded. Content fatigue (the feeling of having seen too much of the same thing) started to set in and has never fully left. On top of that, a growing demand for more content, more entertainment, and a new level of selectivity about who actually deserves a public interaction (follow, comment, like, share on Stories) started to creep in. More recently, automations like the “comment WORD to get this in your inbox” (which I know can be useful, but I also believe destroyed every bit of honest interactions in comments we had left, plus created a level of entitlement that would deserve its own blog post) and the volume of AI-generated content (which, just so you know, people can spot a mile away) have made things even more difficult to navigate.

The silent watcher shift

Basically, what started in 2020 was a gradual but consistent change in how people behave on the platform. They still use it, and they still scroll, watch, read, save, share, and buy. What they’ve stopped doing as much is publicly interacting.

People are watching in silence, and many of them are watching for weeks or months before doing anything visible at all. Someone who has been watching your account for two months without ever liking a post can still become a client, and someone who saves your content every week and never comments might still be engaging with it in a way that matters. The behaviour changed, but the outcome hasn’t necessarily changed with it.

On top of that, there’s also a theory doing the rounds that low engagement is simply down to people spending less time on social media. The data doesn’t really support that: global daily social media usage dropped from 143 minutes per day in 2024 to 141 minutes in 2025 (a two-minute difference), and the number of social media users worldwide is still growing, now over 5.5 billion. What has changed is not how much time people spend online, but how they spend it: more selective, more passive, and spread across more platforms. That’s a behaviour shift and it requires a different response than simply posting more.

I completely understand why this is disheartening if you’re posting consistently and getting three likes and zero comments. Still, the silence is not the same as indifference, and the absence of public interaction is not the same as the absence of results. In practice, this means you need to look beyond the surface to understand what’s actually happening.

The Instagram Stories situation

Stories deserve their own section because what happened there was its own specific issue, and it caused a significant amount of confusion and unnecessary discouragement across the industry.

For a period, Stories became a powerful way to connect with an audience differently from the main feed: they were (and somehow still are) your chance to show a different side of the business, giving followers a more immediate and informal view of what was happening, and helping you build the kind of familiarity that over time translates into trust. People were posting multiple Stories a day, in sequences, without any specific rules, and it worked.

Then something changed: professionals across the industry started noticing that posting more than one Story at a time (and sometimes more than one in 24 hours), or posting a sequence of slides in close succession rather than spacing them out, seemed to result in a significant drop in reach. It wasn’t the gradual decline you might get because you lose viewers from story one to story eleven and it wasn’t isolated to one account or one niche — I was seeing it consistently across different accounts (with a different approach to Stories) and hearing the same thing from peers. One relatively small client account I managed in 2025 was getting great views (up to 3.2k) consistently on single Stories, with a minimum of around 1.5k views when I posted only one Story per day. Every time I tested posting a 2 or 3-slide sequence, views immediately dropped to the 100s — and the dramatic decline in viewers happened on the first slide, before anyone had even had a chance to drop off. The people who were watching were clearly engaged (there was a minimal change in views from slide one to slide three, meaning there was interest), but the reach simply wasn’t there. It felt like being penalised for posting more than one Story.

Instagram eventually acknowledged that there was an issue when people were posting more than one Story per day and said they had fixed it. Whether they did it or not is hard to know precisely: reach on Stories is now more random than it was before the issue started, which at least means the 1-slide rule no longer seems to apply in the same way. But it still isn’t as consistent as it used to be, and the takeaway is essentially to keep testing, stay flexible, and not give up on Stories as a format because of one difficult period.

The format shift that most people haven’t fully caught up with

There’s a separate conversation happening alongside the engagement one, and it’s about formats. Over a few years, Reels dominated everything: algorithm favour, reach, and the attention of every marketing team and social media strategist (and every client was asking the same question “should I post more Reels?”). Many of them built their entire strategy around Reels and haven’t looked up since. And that’s exactly what happens when you stick to the theory without taking a peek into real life and don’t keep yourself updated with new trends, platform updates and user preferences. It’s 2026 and there are still marketing teams and consultants telling clients Reels are “the only way to go” and “let’s post as many Reels as possible, it has to work because they are what people want to see” (just so you know, I have a very different approach).

The data now tells a different story. According to Buffer‘s 2026 report, carousels get roughly 109% more engagement per person reached than Reels, with a median engagement rate of 6.90% compared to 3.31% for Reels when measured against reach. Socialinsider‘s 2026 benchmarks confirm that carousels hold the highest engagement rate among all Instagram post types — 0.55% versus 0.50% for Reels and 0.35% for single images. Reels do reach more people (approximately 36% more than carousels), but reach and engagement are different things, and a piece of content that reaches fewer people but generates significantly more saves, shares, and link clicks is always going to be more useful for a brand.

According to Socialinsider’s 2026 benchmarks, based on 35 million posts, carousels lead in saves and views across every account size, and the data explains why. Instagram resurfaces carousels in the feed multiple times for users who scrolled past without interacting, giving them a built-in multiple-exposure advantage no other format has. Reels, interestingly, for some accounts and formats generate more comments than carousels across all account sizes — Instagram pushes Reels to non-followers who are more likely to leave a reactive comment (that is not always a genuinely interested or supportive one). But for saves, shares, and overall engagement rate, carousels consistently win. The 24% year-over-year decline in engagement rate happened despite Reels dominating time spent on the platform, which tells you something about the difference between passive consumption and active interest.

I consistently see this pattern in my work with social media clients. A small account I work with averages 2.5k reach on carousels with link clicks, saves, shares and a few comments here and there, while Reels on the same account rarely go past 300-500 views and rarely have meaningful interactions. A single static image post for another small account reached 15.6k views with comments, link clicks, shares, and DM conversations following it, while Reels on the same account consistently struggled to pass 1k views. A client with a medium-sized account ran a Reel promoting a webinar and got close to 1k registrations from it (impressive!), but only about 6% showed up. On the other hand, their carousels, with more modest reach numbers, consistently generated direct enquiries, questions, saves and shares that led to actual conversations and conversions.

The Reels-versus-carousels comparison isn’t really about which format is better. The most important thing you should understand is what each format is for: Reels can sometimes improve your reach and put you in front of people who’ve never heard of you (non-followers). Carousels and static content tend to drive deeper engagement from people who are already paying attention (your existing followers). If I wanted to be even more accurate, I would also say that the story is more nuanced than that, but this is a good foundation to start from: a strategy that uses both with that distinction in mind will almost always outperform one that optimises for a single format — regardless of which format that is.

I still encounter marketing departments and social media managers pushing Reels-first strategies simply because the reach numbers look bigger and you have more potential to go viral. But let’s look at the data first, then decide. And what the data supports is a mixed-format strategy where each format is used for what it’s actually good at.

What to track instead

Likes and comment counts are no longer sufficient as the primary measure of whether Instagram is working for your business. The real picture is distributed across metrics that require you to look further.

Saves and shares are stronger signals of content value than likes. If people are saving your posts, they found them useful enough to come back to. If they’re sharing, they found them relevant enough to pass on. Both of these numbers tell you that the content resonated, regardless of what the public-facing numbers show.

Link in bio CTR (the percentage of profile visitors who click through to your website) is one of the most direct indicators available of whether Instagram is driving actual business interest. I’ve written about this in detail in another blog post: this post covers a wellness client whose link in bio CTR has consistently been between 25% and 57% for nearly two years while the account’s public engagement looks modest by most standard measures. The surface and the actual performance are two very different things.

DMs, enquiries, profile visits, and overall website traffic from Instagram complete the picture. The question to ask is not anymore “how many likes and comments did we get?” — forget about that and instead ask “are the people finding this account interested enough to take action?”.

If you can’t immediately answer questions like “what were my top performing posts in the last three months?”, “what’s been driving website clicks or DMs?”, or “how has my link in bio CTR looked recently?” — your approach to your analytics isn’t deep enough to know whether the strategy is working or not.

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So… what to do?

The most important thing, before any tactical decision, is to have a strategy — and to check when you last updated it. A strategy from 2022 or 2023 might have worked wonders at the time, but if you are still using it now, you are making decisions based on assumptions that are no longer accurate. If you’re feeling called out by reading this, it’s time to update your strategy. If you don’t have one, that should be your starting point and number one priority, not another content calendar or a new batch of Reels.

An up-to-date strategy means knowing who you’re talking to and what you need them to do, which metrics reflect real progress toward that goal, and what kind of content serves that audience rather than just filling a posting schedule. But it also means choosing formats with intention (not just going with whatever appears to be trending) and having a definition of success that doesn’t depend on likes and comment counts.

Once you have a strategy, give it at least three months before making significant changes. Not three posts in three months — three months of consistent, deliberate execution with real content volume. The platform is busy and packed with new content every single day, and it’s perfectly normal for results to go up and down: a slow week or a quiet month is not evidence that the strategy isn’t working. Three months of data gives you something you can actually learn from and refine further.

A few things that are important for most accounts right now: responding to comments matters more than the number of comments you receive — Buffer‘s research found that posts where creators or brands reply to comments consistently earn more engagement than posts where they don’t. Keep showing up consistently even through periods of low reach, because stopping makes things harder to recover from. And don’t put all your eggs in one basket (or all your hopes on your Instagram feed) — a website, a blog, a newsletter, something you own and control is not optional. This has always been true and it’s even more urgent now.

The biggest takeaway

The 2017-2019 era of Instagram, with its busy comment sections and lively community conversations, was a real thing and it was a great time to be active on the platform for a lot of brands. The instinct to try to recreate it (to keep commenting, to keep starting conversations, to try to get that old engagement going) is understandable and not entirely wrong. Connection and conversations still matter and they still work when they happen.

But that specific version of the platform isn’t coming back (trust me, I wish I could tell you it is). The brands doing well on Instagram now are the ones that have accepted that and adapted their measurement and strategy accordingly, not the ones waiting for the algorithm to return to something familiar.

Instagram still works for businesses, but what you measure and how you respond to it needs to change with the platform.

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Working with someone who’s been through every version of this

A social media strategy that was built for the platform as it worked two or three years ago is not the same thing as a social media strategy built for the platform as it is now. The measurement, formats, signals that tell you something is working and users’ behaviour are all different — and a strategy that doesn’t account for that will keep producing results that feel like a lot of effort for very little return.

I work with food, drink, and wellness brands on social media strategy and management, building around what the data and the platform are actually telling us right now, and measuring success against metrics that connect to real business outcomes.

If you’re consistently showing up on Instagram and not seeing it translate into enquiries, website traffic, brand awareness, or any of the other things your business actually needs, get in touch here. And if you want to see what the right metrics can look like in practice, this post covers a wellness client whose link in bio CTR has never dropped below 25% in nearly two years — with the full data.