Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January, there has been a flurry of activity online in response to the Trump Administration’s policies. One of the biggest anecdotes circulating is the number of people who are “quitting” social media in response to political polarization, content moderation, or specific relationships certain platforms have with the Trump Administration.
We are watching this closely because we too are curious about how user behavior will affect the usefulness of dominant social media platforms and social media generally. So far, the sentiment has not made an impact on user statistics, but we at FMG anticipate a change as more data comes in during the second quarter.
What we know:
Facebook is still king, and Instagram is in second place. Since both platforms are owned by Meta, we can say that Meta is still the dominant social media platform. YouTube still dominates as a social media video platform, but FMG separates YouTube because it is a video platform.
From Sprout Social:
What is the most used social media by age?
Below is a breakdown of social media usage by age range in the US:
- 18-29 years – YouTube (93%), Instagram (76%), Facebook (68%), Snapchat (65%)
30-49 years – YouTube (94%), Facebook (78%), Instagram (66%), Pinterest (43%)
50-64 years – YouTube (86%), Facebook (70%), Instagram (36%), LinkedIn (30%)
65+ – YouTube (65%), Facebook (59%), Pinterest (22%), Instagram (19%)
Source: Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/
While much has been made about the decline of X (formerly Twitter), it is still seeing user growth, according to some reports (see DataReportal’s “X Users, Stats, Data & Trends for 2025”). This is likely due to the growth of the platform among young males who identify and connect with the political and social messages of Elon Musk (current X owner). It is a platform dominated by males (64% of users are male).
Bluesky is one of the most well-known alternatives to Meta and X and it is enjoying significant growth, but it is not close to eclipsing the top competitors yet. Some reports show that X user decline has conceded with Bluesky user growth. Again, the numbers vary from report to report.
Source: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/bluesky-users
Even with the jump in BlueSky users, the platform is still at approximately 33 million users as of March 2025. Facebook has 3 billion active users monthly worldwide (Source: SproutSocial), and X has 586 million users worldwide (Source: DataReportal).
As a business development consulting firm with a significant number of marketing clients, we are not seeing a drop in viewers or followers for the 20 accounts we manage. Our clients are enjoying steady growth in the number of users who are viewing their content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn. It is still very early in the year, and with millions of users, the behavior changes are bound to take a while to reveal themselves in the stats. However, thus far, the number of users “quitting” major platforms is not yet impacting the social media marketing strategy of our clients. At this time, if clients want to add Bluesky or Substack to their social media portfolio, we are ready.
What we are doing:
In the meantime, we are exploring Bluesky and Substack. We have personal accounts and will likely add FMG accounts to those platforms to monitor discussions and the number of large brands including these platforms in their social media stack.
Data is power. We will continue to monitor these trends (as we always have), and will update our audiences quarterly on what we see.
Notes and Sources:
General social media trends
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/
X trends 2025
https://datareportal.com/essential-x-stats
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/
https://www.cnet.com/tech/how-and-why-to-join-bluesky-which-now-has-31-million-users-as-a-twitter-alternative/
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/bluesky-users
