As Instagram and other social media feeds get swamped with influencers' professionally created content, average users move to private posting and closed groups
and group chats killed it https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Amanda Perelli / @arperelli : I rarely post but I haven't broken up with Instagram. Instead, I use the app differently (DM/close friends). New apps have tried to promise authentic sharing (BeReal), but none have truly broken through because we'd rather share in private https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Amanda Perelli / @arperelli : The old ways of posting are gone, and people don't want to go back. Instead, non-creators are moving toward sharing bits of their lives behind private accounts and closed groups. My latest with @SydneyKBradley on why the social part of social media is dead https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Howie Young / @howie0417 : A fascinating read for the long vacation. An amazing one from @thisisinsider, @arperelli and @SydneyKBradley, on how the social-generation is moving away from traditional social media platforms and towards closed and community-based group chats. https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... (1/6) Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : Social media, as we once knew it, is dead Group chats + messaging apps killed it “Regularly posting content is now largely confined to creators + influencers” “While non-creators are moving toward sharing bits of their lives behind private accounts” https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Instagram’s public experience had already been moving toward recommendation-heavy, creator-led distribution: Meta’s plan to make Facebook more like TikTok included recommending posts from unconnected sources and reintegrating Messenger as part of its TikTok-style redesign. Earlier reporting also tied rapidly rising Instagram influencer spending to concerns about the platform’s originality and appeal as influencer marketing expanded.
The result is a split use case: public feeds increasingly serve creator and media consumption, while ordinary social updates move to DMs, private accounts, and closed groups. That distinction matters because it changes where personal attention and sharing occur without requiring users to leave Instagram.
First-order effects
- Average Instagram users post fewer personal updates to the public feed and shift those interactions into Close Friends, DMs, private accounts, and group chats.
- Creators and influencers become even more central to the public-feed supply, while public posting becomes a less representative measure of everyday user activity.
Second-order effects
- Instagram has a stronger incentive to treat messaging and groups as retention surfaces alongside its creator-driven recommendation feed, consistent with its earlier plan to bring Messenger back into Facebook while increasing unconnected recommendations.
- Apps built around broad public “authentic” sharing face a harder adoption problem when users’ preferred audience is an existing private social graph rather than a new public network.
Third-order effects
- Social platforms may increasingly operate as two linked products: algorithmic public media for discovery and private conversation for relationships, with different formats, measurement, and monetization opportunities.
- If public feeds continue to professionalize, influence and information distribution will concentrate further among creators and publishers—even as personal sharing persists in spaces that are less visible to the wider network.
The trend: This is part of social media’s shift from a shared public posting layer toward creator-led discovery paired with private, group-based communication.