As 2025 comes to a close, allow me to lead your postmortem on the social media trends that defined 2025 — and what to learn for 2026. Let’s dissect what failed and what’s here to stay.
2025 Trend Fails and Flops
Not all trends are created equal. Here are a few that didn’t survive 2025.
- Thin Horizontal Instagram Videos
These 5120x1080 videos dominated Instagram feeds … for all of five seconds. For some brands, like KitKat, the trend fit naturally. Many others felt forced and gimmicky. The #1 rule for if your brand should hop on a trend is whether you’re adding something helpful, useful, entertaining or interesting to the discussion. If not, consider what it is you’re trying to achieve.
There are a few reasons I believe this trend didn’t catch on. For one, in a world where attention spans are short and constantly bombarded with content, I don’t think taking up less real estate on social feeds is necessarily effective. And two, the trend was so pervasive for that two-to-three-day stretch, it didn’t make brands who hopped on it stand out. It made them all blur together.
While this aspect ratio is still a feature you can use, do so sparingly and intentionally. There’s no need to resize all your videos into the thinnest slice imaginable — the novelty has come and gone.
- Hashtags
RIP to hashtags, perhaps one of the longest-standing social media trends, which officially died in 2025 (if not before). Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, confirmed suspicions that hashtags no longer improve reach on Instagram in mid-2025.
However, keywords are an effective way to improve your reach and SEO. We don’t recommend keyword-stuffing your captions full of every possible search term but do consider searchability when writing post copy in 2026 and beyond.
- AI Slop
Across the internet, AI-generated videos caught plenty of unsuspecting viewers unaware. Trampoline bunnies, anyone? But AI-generated content also became pervasive on copy-heavy platforms like LinkedIn.
You may have noticed your LinkedIn feed has become saturated with thought leaders posting novellas with lots of em dashes, Oxford commas and too many punchy, hard returns. You might have even seen two posts from completely different people that were almost identical.
Here’s the deal: “Thought leadership” that’s generated by AI is not, in fact, thought leadership. If AI generates it, it means it’s been said before. While we firmly believe AI is here to stay and can be an incredibly helpful tool for any brand, it cannot function as a replacement for creativity or human commentary.
Unfortunately, I’m sure that AI-written LinkedIn posts will persist, but the reality is, they won’t be effective as audiences catch on and content quality deteriorates. Leave this in 2025 and opt for more effective uses of AI in 2026.
2025 Trends That Are Here to Stay
- User-Generated Content (UGC) & Influencer Marketing
If your brand hasn’t embraced UGC on social media yet, you have fallen behind. UGC and lo-fi content have been cornerstones of our social media strategy for years now, and they show no signs of letting up. Users crave authenticity. It doesn’t have to mean low quality; it just needs to feel real.
Influencers aren’t going anywhere either. In 2025, 86% of U.S. marketers planned to partner with creators and more than a quarter of brands allocated over 40% of their budgets to influencer marketing. Social platforms generate billions of dollars in commerce revenue every year, and that’s only expected to grow.
If it’s not feasible for your brand to create lo-fi content or source UGC in 2026, hiring creators to share your message in ways that are natural and social-first is the next best thing.
- Passive Engagement
If you noticed your engagement rates falling off in 2025, you’re not alone. Passive engagement is increasingly common on social media. Users can endlessly scroll, without the need for liking or commenting.
So, what do we do? Trying to force or “hack” likes or comments is never a good idea. Instead, adjust the KPIs you’re measuring success by. KPIs that might more effectively demonstrate success in 2026 are average watch time, save rate and send rate. Keep these invisible engagements in mind as you create your content. Carousels that get users to swipe through, truncated captions that drive a tap to expand and content that lends itself to saves and shares will prevail.
- Social Media as SEO
Social media platforms themselves began to be used like search engines a couple of years ago. Younger internet users are increasingly using TikTok and Instagram much like many of us use Google — typing in queries to field the results they’re looking for.
But then, in July 2025, Meta released an update that allows search engines like Google to crawl and index public Facebook and Instagram photos and videos. This means that content posted on Meta can now show up in search engine results pages (SERP).
This is great news for brands. Your social content that uses keywords appropriately can now get extra life through search, so be sure to give your captions and supers extra intentionality in 2026.
As we head into 2026, we’ll be prioritizing quality over quantity in our clients’ social media strategies. Creating meaningful connection with useful, engaging content should be a foundational piece of every content strategy, no matter where the trends take us. If you need help developing impactful social media for your brand, give us a shout. We’d love to help.
