Is Your Instagram Engagement as Bad as You Think?

The reality, in 2025, is that Instagram engagement is down. For EVERYONE. It’s a combination of factors, but a reality nonetheless for almost everyone.

In 2020, average engagement on Instagram was 2.5 to 3%. Today, it’s down to about 0.9%.

Why is this happening?

First of all, post-pandemic, Instagram and social media are just different. Prior to 2020, brands had a pretty stable content plan (and that didn’t typically include a lot of content). But during the pandemic in 2020, brands had to rethink their social strategies and get more active, especially on Instagram, to stay in front of their audiences. That was fine for a while, because we, as consumers were all at home and online too. But post-pandemic, we all went back to work, school, and busy lives, keeping us off social media more. But brands didn’t cut back on their content – they’re used to more content creation and keep at it. So we have more content created and less people consuming it.

The second big reason is Reels. Reels launched in 2020 as well and now we have another whole feed on Instagram. We have the home feed, the Reels feed, Stories, DMs, Explore… it’s a lot of places to go. And if someone is scrolling through the Reels feed, they aren’t scrolling through the home feed, missing all the posts there. This does NOT mean to go all in on Reels, just beware that our consumers’ attention is pulled in more directions now.

Where’s your engagement?

To calculate your engagement rate, follow this simple formula:
[(Total post engagement) / (follower count)] x 100

So, if you have 52 likes and 9 comments on a post and you have 1720 followers:
(52 + 9) / 1720 = 0.035 x 100 = 3.5%

If your engagement rate is above 1%, you’re literally better than average!

Also, the larger your following, the lower your engagement rate will be – more followers who are less engaged.

In general, accounts with under 1000 followers should see higher engagement rates, closer to 5-10%. Whereas accounts with over 10k followers, will see engagement closer to 1%.