Are the days of massive growth in social media over?

According to a new study by Media Technology Monitor (MTM), which surveyed 4,000 Anglophone Canadians this past spring, the country’s appetite for social media has been consistent – with a slight dip in penetration – over the past year.

According to MTM, 77% of respondents have used social media in the past month. That’s just a hair shy of the 78% that responded in the affirmative in both the fall and the spring of 2017. The number of respondents using social media has only gone up by two percentage points since 2014.

The only age groups that showed growth in social media usage were millennials (18 to 34) and Gen X (35 to 49), which grew by one percentage point each (to 90% and 87%, respectively). Young boomers (50 to 64) stayed steady at 69% and boomers older than 65 went down three percentage points to 54%.

Facebook is the preeminent social network among Canadians, with 72% of respondents saying they have used Facebook in the past month. Second-place finisher Instagram had less than half of that penetration at 33%. Twitter and LinkedIn captured just one quarter of respondents each and Snapchat came in at 18%.

Although Instagram isn’t as popular as Facebook, it was the only network that has seen major growth over the last year. From spring 2017 to spring 2018, Instagram’s penetration went up seven percentage points, whereas Facebook’s went down by two.

For its recent Q2, Snapchat reported a decline in its daily active users across all key global regions, while Twitter also saw its monthly active users go down.

Two-thirds of respondents who use Instagram have posted a photo in the past month. Liking, watching and following others on Instagram is more popular than posting one’s own content.

And, despite the increasing popularity of mobile devices, Facebook users access the platform almost the same amount on a desktop computer than they do on a mobile phone. Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are still significantly more popular on smartphones.