At this point I feel like instagram is only popular because there is a generation who can't/won't read anymore. We are slowly turning into degenerates. Maybe Idiocracy was right after all.

I wouldn't say that it is a generation that can't read, rather I would word it as a generation that cannot write. The death of long-form text in user-created content on the web came largely from people starting to use their mobile phone as their primary device. A touch keyboard just isn’t as inviting a tool for expressing thoughts at length as a computer keyboard.

My thoughts exactly. I have literally asked my friends list on facebook to write more - in whichever language they're comfortable with, rather than just posting images of their food or the artificial and inflated display of how rich and happy they are. It's pretty sad, but to each his own, I guess.

I'd say the same shift is happening there

Although the instagram platform is more active than ever for browsing chatting and comments, the individuals aren't posting often and the individual activity has shifted to TikTok.

People used to post images every day on Instagram, that's down to like once a year maybe amongst my friends in their 20s and younger.

With the ephemeral stories being common-ish.

And it seems like most of the viral stories/reels/IGTV are just resyndicated from TikTok.

Meme/activist/comedian/lifestyle brand accounts are like all the static post activity. Which is a lot of activity and growing, but I don't think it is fulfilling the "social network" itch that people think it is, the itch where people have just gotten used to seeing a feed/stream of their friends over the last 15 years. I think that has moved on elsewhere.