After more than a decade of growth and addictive engagement, the combination of low-quality AI content, hostile advertising, and user fatigue is set to make social platforms less compelling, says Cade Diehm, head of research at the World Ethical Data Foundation.

Drawing on global data and user trends, Diehm predicts 2026 to be the year we all begin to tire of social media, as audiences break their doomscrolling habits and seek news, entertainment, and community elsewhere:

“The combination of AI slop, the ownership of US social media by partisan figures pushing their own political agendas, age verification, increasingly aggressive advertising practices and more, will lead many to break their ‘addictions’ to social media doomscrolling and look elsewhere for news and media.

“This could herald the return of editorialisation. The evidence? Deloitte Australia shows a measurable drop in overall media engagement and a sharp decline in social-media use, explicitly linked to low-quality AI content and mental-health concerns. Global analysis by the FT and others suggests social-media time peaked around 2022 and is drifting down in many regions, especially among younger users in Europe. The US is still high.”