Social and AI Competing forces

AI is competing with social platforms on many fronts – from time and attention to challenging the core USP. Consumers have long turned to social for socialisation, information, and – increasingly – entertainment. However, AI is now competing for all three, and consumer behaviour is shifting accordingly. Meta and X are responding by embracing AI and transitioning to AI-first models. Meanwhile, Snapchat is more light-touch, incorporating AI features without changing its USP. 

This shift extends beyond platform competition, as AI poses a disruption across entertainment – including how fandom is built, how platforms compete for attention, and how consumers will act a decade from now. The entertainment landscape will look very different moving forward, withAI underpinning the change. This report is designed to equip you with an understanding of where the social environment is heading, and how to best respond to retain relevance, engagement, and value moving forward.

About the data in this report: In some cases, charts in this report display a non-exhaustive selection of the answer options listed. See accompanying Excel sheet for the full list of answer options by survey question.

Data and insights in this report:

  • Main reasons for using AI and using social platforms and overlap between them
  • Aspects of social media which are most important to users
  • Attitudes towards integrating AU features into existing social platforms by age groups
  • Types of activity (e.g., posting own photos / videos, sharing content, passively observing) split by social platform
  • Weekly and daily active use of social platforms
  • Usage of AI various tools

Data used:

  • MIDiA Research Consumer Survey Q2 2025, US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea, Brazil, n = 9,003
  • MIDiA Research Consumer Survey Q3 2025, US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, n = 7,021
  • MIDiA Research Consumer Survey Q4 2025, US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea, Brazil, n = 9,084
  • MIDiA Research Consumer Survey Q1 2026, US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Poland, Japan, Colombia, n = 9,000

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