highdog/Getty, Instagram, Tyler Le/BI
- Instagram beat out TikTok in growth and downloads in 2023.
- The social app seemed ready for the glue factory just a year or two ago.
- A mix of growth in Reels and Threads and disenchantment with TikTok helped.
Not so long ago, it seemed like Instagram's relevance was fading.
TikTok was an existential threat and had captured the younger teen and Gen Z audience. Instagram was so closely associated with the millennial aesthetic — avocado toast, emoji captions, the pressure to show off a sanitized and rosy view of one's life — that it seemed destined to go down (in coolness) with the millennial ship along with skinny jeans.