Posting significant events in your life, from birthdays to weddings and promotions, is a social media staple. But Jenny, like many other Britons recently, has hesitated over contributing to the infinite scroll.
“I wouldn’t have even posted my wedding really,” she says. “But I had to because … There’s like an etiquette. Nobody else can post your wedding until you’ve posted. So my friends were like: ‘Please post, it’s been like a week.’”
Peer pressure aside, the 32-year-old is not alone. Britain’s communications watchdog reported last week that UK adults were becoming less active on social media platforms. Ofcom said just under half of adult social media users (49%) now post, share or comment, compared with 61% in 2024.
So is the UK turning off social media?
A number of factors are behind the drop. They include the rise of passive social media consumption and unease over the unearthing of ill-conceived historical posts, while there is also an undercurrent of concern about mental health impacts and too much screen time. At the very least, the Ofcom data shows Britons engaging with the issues swirling around such a pivotal medium in our lives.
A central issue driving the data is the changing nature of social media itself. The rise of apps such as TikTok and the popularity of video features including Instagram’s Reels mean that people are consuming social media more passively and are less likely to take an active role, a change compared with how they might have behaved on platforms such as Facebook.
“A lot of this is down to the nature of social media platforms changing,” says Joseph Oxlade, a senior research manager at Ofcom. “It is much harder for people to play in these spaces themselves.”
The attention economy is being televised. The UK is TikTok’s largest European user base, with more than 30 million people using the app, while Instagram’s owner, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, boasted in January that the viewing of Reels – short video clips – was up 30% in the US compared with the previous 12 months, and that Facebook video views were also growing by double digits.
If present day use of social media is leading to people posting less, then past use is also a problem. Ofcom said in its annual media use and attitudes survey that fear of old posts coming back to haunt users was also playing a role.
“There is also an element of people worrying about what they are posting online affecting them later in life,” says Oxlade.
The list of online shame is long and affects all walks of life. The actor Karla Sofía Gascón lost out on a best actress Oscar because of historical tweets about Islam and George Floyd, while the Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn, was fired from the franchise by Disney after old tweets making light of rape, paedophilia, 9/11 and the Holocaust resurfaced, although he was later reinstated.
Some posts cause a fuss that blows over quickly, such as the England footballer Declan Rice’s posting of apparent support for the IRA in 2015 – three years before the former Republic of Ireland international declared his allegiance to England. He apologised and the world moved on.
Old social media posts are a particular bane in the world of politics. In December, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, one of the appointees chosen by the newly elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, resigned after the resurfacing of tweets posted in the previous decade that included references to “money hungry Jews”. In the UK in 2024, the Labour MP for Rochester and Strood, Lauren Edwards, apologised “wholeheartedly” for a 2009 tweet that referred to “fucking Estonian retards”.
Against this backdrop Ofcom reported the number of adults concerned about whether something they said online could cause them problems in the future was rising, from 43% in 2024 to 49%.
Oxlade says this fear could be linked to increasing polarisation, which also shows up in the survey. More than a quarter of adults see viewpoints online that they disagree with, according to the survey of 7,500 people across the UK.
“It could be a factor in people not wanting to post something, if people will see further down the line that is a controversial view,” says Oxlade.
There are signs that this is all adding up. The Ofcom report contains data referring to concerns about the mental health impact of social media use and excessive screen time. The proportion of adults for whom the benefits of being online outweigh the risks has fallen to 59%, from 72% in 2024. The proportion of users who say these platforms are good for their mental health has fallen to 36%, down from 42%, while 40% report spending too much time on their screens “most days”.
About a third of adults say they have deleted an app because they spent too much time on it, or it was bad for their mental health, up from a quarter in 2025. Younger adults are more likely to get rid of apps on that basis, said Ofcom.
The survey was accompanied by a panel of 20 people, their names changed for data protection reasons, who are interviewed by the watchdog annually about their media habits, including Jenny. Another panel member, Robert, 29, describes screens being ever-present in his life, in a manner that is doubtless relatable to many of his peers.
“All my reading is on a screen,” he says. “All my work is on a screen. If I’m playing chess or Catan [a strategy board game], that will be on a screen. And then obviously if you’re watching stuff that’s by definition on a screen. So, as a result, it just becomes more and more and more. It’s one of those things where you’re conscious of it, but it’s quite difficult to escape.”
The debate about the impact of social media on mental health and the way our lives are dominated by screens is hard to escape – and the survey captures that.
Andy Burrows, the chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, a charity established by the family of Molly Russell, a teenager who killed herself after viewing harmful online content, says the data on mental health and app deletion indicates a “tipping point” may be nearing in the debate over social media regulation.
“These figures suggest that there probably would be a groundswell of support among adults to get platforms to design their products in a way that gives us all greater agency in how we use them,” Burrows says.
“Right now, lots of us are left with a pretty blunt choice of either using these products that are monetising and hoarding our attention, or having to turn them off altogether. Lots of us would like to see a middle ground.”
Others say more evidence is needed.
Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University, says the data around mental health could reflect the “almost constant bombardment” of negative stories about social media use.
“It’s received knowledge now and that will have an impact on how people perceive these things,” he says.
More work is needed globally on studying the impact of social media on mental health, Etchells adds.
The Commons science and technology select committee has begun an inquiry into neuroscience and digital childhoods, with its chair, the Labour MP Chi Onwurah, saying we “still know far too little about how these habits affect children’s health, wellbeing and cognitive abilities”. Also in the UK, hundreds of teenagers will trial social media bans, digital curfews and time limits on apps under a government pilot, alongside a consultation on whether under-16s should be barred from accessing social media.
Nonetheless, Etchells says people paying more attention to how they use social media and its impact on their health, as shown by the Ofcom data, is a good thing.
“It’s the starting point for developing better relationships with the tech that we use.”
Social media is still embedded in our lives. Nine out of 10 internet users use at least one social media platform.
TechUK, a trade body for the tech industry, says the Ofcom survey shows a shift in how people use social media rather than a turn in sentiment.
“The shift observed in Ofcom’s study suggests a more considered, intentional use of social media which is arguably a sign of maturing digital literacy, not disillusionment. People are learning to use these tools on their own terms,” says Doniya Soni-Clarke, an associate director of external affairs at techUK.
The Ofcom report also points to social media losing its, well, social aspect. In an age of video posts, people are consuming their feed more as entertainment than as interaction.
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, says it is a case of social media now entering into a mature phase with “smarter, safer participation” where people are “less willing to perform for a broad audience”.
This concentrates content creation in the hands of creators and influencers, says Navarra, while everyone else plays the role of consumer.
“The gap between who creates and who consumes is widening and that is reshaping what social media actually is.”
Overall, time spent online is not decreasing. Last year, the average time spent online on personal devices was four hours and 30 minutes a day, up 10 minutes on 2024. So we are still hooked on technology. Even amid signs that Britons having growing concerns about the health impact of social media, the Ofcom data indicates the country is embracing another type of technology: AI.
More than half of UK adults now use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Ofcom says, rising to eight out of 10 for 16- to 24-year-olds. And it is the younger cohort who are turning to AI for companionship, with about one in five 25- to 34-year-olds.
If Britons are harbouring doubts about one type of technology, they are certainly embracing another, with all the concerns over mental health and excessive engagement that are likely to come with it.
