The obituary writers have been busy again.

Recent data from Ofcom, the British communications regulator, showed that only 49 percent of adult social media users now actively post, share or comment, down from 61 percent in 2024. The usual funeral announcements appeared on LinkedIn, which is itself a social media platform, though one whose users rarely acknowledge the irony.

But the reports of social media's death, to borrow from a writer who predated both television and the internet, appear to have been exaggerated. According to the same Ofcom study, British adults still spend roughly four and a half hours a day on social platforms. They have simply stopped talking and started watching.

This behavioral shift — from posting to viewing, from participation to consumption — has turned what were once called "social networks" into something that more closely resembles, well, television. (The industry term for this is "the TikTokification of social media," which is the sort of phrase that makes one grateful for the relative elegance of "infomercial.")

The convergence is traveling in both directions. Creators who built audiences on TikTok and YouTube are now landing development deals with Netflix and major streaming platforms. Saturday Night Live's new British edition draws modest broadcast ratings but has accumulated more than 86 million views across social platforms, where the clips — cold opens, celebrity cameos — circulate like currency.

Meanwhile, YouTube reports that more viewers now watch on television sets than on phones, and Instagram has begun testing viewing experiences on Amazon Fire TV devices.

For marketers navigating this increasingly undifferentiated landscape, the implications are practical rather than philosophical. Research from the IPA Influencer Databank suggests that influencer marketing delivers long-term effects at rates nearly identical to traditional television advertising. The mechanism, it turns out, is the same: entertainment.

The insight is not new. What changes is merely the screen.

Original story published in Marketing Week: "Marketers should view social and TV as allies not opponents"