The Italian social media market has reached a saturation phase, with X collapsing while Instagram shows signs of fatigue and TikTok holds up thanks to time spent by users. In the coming months the scenario could change with the entry of artificial intelligence. This is the situation outlined by the analysis of digital expert Vincenzo Cosenza with the data from the Audicom-Audiweb detection system, previewed at ANSA.
«There is an unprecedented contraction in the use of some social networks that begins in 2024 and continues in the first months of 2025 – says Cosenza – Between January-September 2024 and 2025 there is a loss of 0.16% of overall users and a rebalancing of flows between platforms». The most sensational collapse is that of Xthe former Twitter so renamed by Elon Musk after purchasing it in October 2022, which ranks seventh among the most used social networks in Italy: it suffered a decline of 12.8% between 2023 and 2024 and in the last months of 2025 it totaled -27.6%, equal to a haemorrhage of 4.4 million users. The time spent on this platform also decreases by 30%. Among the other social networks in decline, the analysis reports Twitch (-35%), Snapchat (-4.4%) and Tumblr (-40%). Among the “small outsiders” are instead growing Threads (Meta’s social network born as a response to
Trends aside, the ranking of the platforms most used by Italians shows first place YouTube: it has an audience of 37.1 million people (+0.5% on 2023) but is decreasing by 1% if the first nine months of 2024 and 2025 are compared. Not far away is Facebook with a monthly average of around 35.8 million usersthe decline in the first 9 months of 2025 is as much as 1 million users (-2.9%), but it remains the social network where Italians spend the most time (on average 13 hours and 29 minutes per month per person). On the podium is Instagram with almost 32.9 million users but with a decrease of 1.9 points in 2025 compared to the first nine months of 2024 (used for 8 and 52 minutes per month). TikTok is stable in fourth place, with an audience of 22.4 million users (increasing from 2023 to 2024 by %, but decreasing in the last nine months by 0.6%). And from January to September of 2024 and 2025, the time spent by users grew by 27%. Telegram, which has 16.5 million users, rises to fifth place (+1.2% compared to 2023, but down 1.5% in recent months). Next up, LinkedIn with around 15 million users per month and «a continuous decline, first of 13% and now of 7.7%” with also «a big problem of involvement» of users (15 minutes per month) «We will see what will happen in the coming months when social networks undergo a transformation due to the massive entry of content produced with artificial intelligence and, in some cases, also of chatbots which should stimulate engagement – concludes Cosenza – In this area Meta is already giving users the possibility of creating and communicating with chatbots and X is integrating Grok among its functions. They are experiments, destined to be strengthened. I expect some more decisive moves from TikTok, given that parent company ByteDance is investing heavily in the development of generative models.”
