Worst to Best: The social platforms you should be using (and my honest thoughts) [2026]

I’ve been running a social media agency for five years now and working in digital marketing and PR for well over a decade. Long enough to have watched platforms promise connection, deliver chaos, then quietly blame the algorithm when it all goes wrong.

Some platforms are still genuinely useful. Some are tolerable if you understand what they’re actually good for. And some exist almost entirely as performance spaces where people reassure each other that everything is going very well.

If you’re a brand, a public figure, or a business trying to decide where to focus in 2026, this is the realistic version, not the optimistic one.

Before we get into it, a quick reality check

Before ranking platforms or talking about relevance, it’s worth grounding this in actual usage rather than perception.

As of late 2025 going into 2026, Facebook is still the most used social media platform in the world, with just over 3 billion monthly active users. That puts it ahead of YouTube at roughly 2.5 billion, Instagram at around 3 billion, WhatsApp at approximately 2 billion, and TikTok at roughly 1.6 billion. Meta alone owns three of the largest platforms globally.

That matters, because cultural relevance and real-world usage are no longer the same thing.

Some platforms feel dominant because they’re loud, constantly discussed, or heavily represented in marketing and media circles. Others are dismissed as outdated or irrelevant, despite quietly reaching far more people, far more often, across far more demographics.

This disconnect is why so many brands get social media strategy wrong. They chase platforms that look exciting or fashionable, while ignoring the ones that still deliver scale, consistency, and measurable results. This piece isn’t about what’s trendy, it’s about what actually works, where the risks sit, and how each platform really functions in 2026.

X (Twitter) – Unsettled, reactive, and easy to misstep on

Best for: News organisations, live updates, link sharing

Paid ads: Rarely worth it

X still moves quickly, and that remains its main appeal. If you need to push links fast or comment in real time, it can still do that better than most platforms.

The issue is how unstable it feels. The algorithm is incredibly reactive. One curious click, one pause on a post you didn’t even agree with, and suddenly your entire feed shifts as if the platform has decided who you are now.

From a personal perspective, it can feel abrasive. From a brand perspective, it’s high risk for very little reward. Context disappears quickly, nuance struggles to survive, and people tend to assume intent rather than interpretation.

It’s not that X is unusable, it’s that it feels constantly on edge. Unless you’re a news outlet or a public figure who understands exactly why you’re there, it often creates more problems than it solves. I usually advise clients to either be very quiet on it, or skip it entirely.

It’s a platform where everything feels slightly flammable, which isn’t ideal for most brands.

LinkedIn – Everyone is giving themselves a standing ovation

Best for: B2B brands, recruiters, consultants

Paid ads: Very expensive, but annoyingly effective

I genuinely struggle to scroll LinkedIn without laughing or closing the app.

It feels like the platform for people who wanted to run a business, expected a pat on the back from friends and family, and then quietly realised no one really cared. LinkedIn becomes the place where that applause finally arrives. A mild announcement about a business update is met with praise like they’ve cured something terminal.

The tone is completely surreal. People write as if they’re delivering a keynote speech to a sold-out arena, sharing profound lessons about leadership, resilience, or growth, inspired by things like crossing the road safely or surviving a mildly inconvenient commute.

“I faced a challenge this morning.”

“The train was delayed.”

“Here’s what it taught me about perseverance.”

The comments are just as strange.

“Wow, so inspiring.”

“Love this mindset.”

“Powerful perspective.”

All posted within minutes. All saying absolutely nothing. All written by people hoping the algorithm notices them applauding loudly enough.

My favourite genre is the heroic boss post. Someone announces they let their team leave 20 minutes early on a Friday and is immediately treated like a champion of modern working culture. What a hero.

AI has only added to the theatre. People who previously couldn’t spell are now producing perfectly polished essays with immaculate grammar and a suspiciously American tone. Miraculously, everyone found their voice at the same time.

To be fair, LinkedIn ads do work. They’re expensive, but for B2B brands they remain a solid paid channel.

A few realities worth knowing:

• Posting Friday to Sunday is largely pointless

• Engagement looks meaningful, but is mostly performative

• Don’t be flattered by AI comments, they’re not compliments

LinkedIn works best if you treat it like a billboard, not a diary. As a platform overall, though, it’s pretty awful. Useful, but awful.

Bluesky – The oat milk of social media

Best for: People who want to feel good about their platform choices

Paid ads: Not really a thing

Bluesky is the oat milk of social media platforms.

People don’t use it because it’s exciting or particularly effective. They use it because it makes them feel like they’re making a positive choice. “I don’t use X anymore,” they’ll say, proudly, as if switching apps is a form of self-improvement.

And look, it is calmer. Cleaner. Nicer. Nothing awful jumps out at you. But that doesn’t automatically make it useful.

There’s a very specific energy on Bluesky. Lots of people congratulating each other for being on Bluesky. A shared understanding that everyone here is doing the right thing. The content is fine, the engagement is polite, and very little actually happens.

From a business perspective, it’s hard to justify prioritising it. There are a few creators doing well, but for most accounts it feels like posting thoughts into a very pleasant, very quiet room.

Nice intentions. Limited impact.

TikTok – Powerful, popular, and increasingly uncomfortable

Best for: Awareness, trends, short-term visibility

Paid ads: Inconsistent, often poor value

TikTok is a strange platform because it feels enormous when you’re using it, but surprisingly contained once you step outside it.

Content moves fast inside the app. Trends explode overnight, creators can gain huge numbers in a short space of time, and everything feels loud and dominant. But what TikTok rarely does is translate that attention beyond its own ecosystem. Even when something feels “everywhere” on TikTok, it often goes absolutely nowhere else.

From a crisis PR perspective, that containment matters. When clients are being dragged primarily on TikTok, it’s usually less damaging than it looks. The outrage tends to stay inside the app. It’s intense, unpleasant, and noisy, but often short-lived, with limited crossover into mainstream media, search results, or long-term reputational impact.

That containment is also why TikTok fame is so fragile.

The lifespan of a TikTok creator continues to shrink. Most see a rapid rise followed by an equally rapid drop within months. Unless someone manages to move their audience onto YouTube, Instagram, or television, the platform is unforgiving. It rewards novelty, not longevity.

You can see TikTok’s influence clearly in how traditional television is now behaving, particularly in the UK. Daytime shows, panel shows, and entertainment formats increasingly feature TikTok creators, not because TikTok needs television, but because television needs TikTok. As older, more reliable TV audiences age out, mainstream channels are under real pressure to reconnect with younger viewers, and TikTok creators are being used as a bridge.

Alongside all of this sits a broader discomfort about the platform itself.

There is ongoing confusion, speculation, and rumour around ownership structures, regulatory oversight, and political pressure, particularly in relation to how content is surfaced or suppressed. None of this is ever clear enough to point at definitively, and much of what circulates online is unproven or exaggerated, but the uncertainty alone is enough to affect behaviour.

People increasingly question whether the algorithm is neutral. They talk about certain narratives travelling more easily than others, about content quietly stalling, about visibility feeling selective rather than organic. Whether those perceptions are fair or not, once users start doubting the system, trust erodes.

For brands, this creates hesitation. Not because of obvious censorship, but because of opacity. When it’s hard to understand why something performs or doesn’t, planning becomes guesswork rather than strategy.

That uncertainty has also fed into brand fatigue. Most brands have now realised that trying to “do TikTok” rarely works. Jumping on trends, forcing humour, or attempting to speak like teenagers usually comes across as awkward. The effort to fit in is obvious, and audiences tend to scroll straight past it.

Paid advertising reflects this reality. CPMs can look attractive, but attention quality is weak. Ads are skipped quickly, recall is low, and conversions often underperform. TikTok is built for consumption, not consideration.

It’s also one of the most hostile platforms when it comes to pile-ons. Context disappears quickly, cruelty performs well, and cancellations can be particularly nasty, even if they rarely last.

TikTok isn’t disappearing, and it still has cultural weight. But it’s a high-speed, high-burn environment shaped by trends, pressure, and uncertainty. Useful for visibility, risky for reputation, and rarely the foundation you want to build anything lasting on.

Reddit – Still real, but much angrier than it used to be

Best for: Niche communities, research

Paid ads: Tricky

A few years ago, I loved Reddit because it felt normal. It was one of the only places online where people weren’t trying to become influencers. No glossy personal branding, no curated identities, just anonymous people saying what they actually thought.

That anonymity was the appeal. Everyone was equal. If something did well, it was because what you wrote was interesting, useful, or funny, not because of who you were.

That’s still Reddit’s biggest strength. There are no influencers. Everyone is on the same level.

But it’s also where the platform has changed.

Reddit feels angrier now. More extreme. Discussions flip quickly from reasonable to vicious, and pile-ons happen fast. Subreddits can become echo chambers, and the tone has shifted from debate to verdict.

From a crisis PR perspective, Reddit can be brutal. Anonymous discussions about people often drift into character assassination, and because it rewards sharpness over fairness, cruelty travels well.

The part people underestimate is that Reddit is indexed on Google. So if a thread gains traction, it can start ranking in search results. Anonymous speculation, exaggeration, or outright nastiness can quietly become part of someone’s online footprint. That’s where it starts to feel uncomfortably close to gossip forums, collective judgement, very little accountability.

Reddit is still valuable. It’s still one of the best places for honest insight and niche community research. But it’s no longer the calm, sensible corner it once felt like. It’s sharper, more reactive, and more comfortable with going too far.

Snapchat – commercially strong, reputationally misunderstood

Best for: Paid advertising, younger demographics, direct response

Paid ads: Consistently strong

Snapchat has a reputation problem, and it’s one that didn’t come out of nowhere.

From a crisis PR perspective, when Snapchat comes up in the context of an investigation or allegation, it immediately raises questions. Not because the platform itself is inherently bad, but because of how it has historically been used. Disappearing messages, private communication, and a lack of visible public context mean it often becomes part of uncomfortable narratives. That association has stuck, fairly or not, and it’s something any experienced PR professional has to acknowledge.

That said, day to day, Snapchat is actually a very clean platform.

From a commercial and advertising point of view, it performs extremely well when used properly. Snapchat isn’t about broadcasting identity or building a public-facing persona. It’s a closed, habitual app that people open multiple times a day, often without thinking. That makes it very effective for paid campaigns that need speed, repetition, and clear calls to action.

Demographically, Snapchat is strongest with 16–34 year olds, particularly at the younger end of that range. It’s one of the few platforms where Gen Z attention is still relatively consistent, and where ads don’t feel as disruptive because they’re built into the experience rather than bolted on.

It works especially well for:

• direct response campaigns

• app installs and subscriptions

• product launches

• fast-moving promotions

Where brands go wrong is trying to turn Snapchat into a brand-building or storytelling platform. That’s not what it’s for. Snapchat works best when you treat it like paid media, not culture. You run ads, you measure performance, and you move on.

So yes, reputationally, Snapchat carries baggage, and that context matters. But commercially, stripped of assumptions and used correctly, it remains one of the more effective paid advertising platforms available.

It just needs to stay firmly in its lane.

Facebook – Still the biggest platform, whether it feels like it or not

Best for: B2C brands, services, community-led businesses

Paid ads: Still excellent

Facebook has an image problem, but it does not have a usage problem.

Culturally, it’s often dismissed, especially by people who work in media, marketing, or live in major cities. In those circles, Facebook feels outdated, something you technically still have, but don’t really think about.

Globally, that perception doesn’t match reality.

Going into 2026, Facebook still has over 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used social platform in the world by a significant margin. It reaches audiences that Instagram, TikTok, and newer platforms simply do not reach as consistently, particularly older demographics, families, homeowners, and people whose lives are not centred around social media as an identity space.

That scale is exactly why it continues to perform so well commercially.

From an advertising perspective, Facebook remains one of the most reliable platforms available. Even now, it regularly delivers stronger results for many businesses than Instagram or TikTok. Targeting is mature, user behaviour is predictable, and people are far more accustomed to clicking, reading, and taking action.

Facebook also operates very differently to most modern platforms. People don’t just scroll it, they use it. They join Groups, ask for recommendations, organise events, follow local updates, and interact around real-world needs rather than personal branding.

Facebook Groups are where this is most obvious. Groups function more like digital communities than feeds. Engagement is practical, not performative. When brands understand how to work around Groups properly, whether by creating their own or positioning themselves naturally within existing ones, the trust and response they generate is far higher than what most brand pages achieve elsewhere.

This is why Facebook works particularly well for:

• service-based businesses

• local and regional brands

• products tied to real-life needs rather than aesthetics

• audiences who may not post much, but still use the platform daily

Organic reach on business pages is limited, but Facebook was never just about posting content for likes. It’s infrastructure. Ads, Groups, events, sharing, recommendations, and habit.

I don’t use Facebook personally and would happily never log in again. But professionally, it remains one of the most dependable tools available. It doesn’t need to feel cool to work.

Instagram – “Great” for businesses with budget, absolutely miserable personally

Best for: Brands, e-commerce, public figures

Paid ads: Essential

Instagram is one of those platforms where two things can be true at once.

From a business perspective, it still works.

From a personal perspective, it’s pretty fucking awful now.

Engagement has dropped so much that it’s fundamentally changed how people use the platform. Hardly anyone does a proper grid post anymore unless they’re very confident, very famous, or simply don’t care. Most people stick to Stories, maybe the odd Reel, but the grid feels like a public performance space where you’re quietly judged on how well it lands.

It’s become a running joke online. TikToks warning people about Instagram behaviour are everywhere. “They’re watching your Stories but not liking your posts.” “They see everything you do but won’t engage.” Half joke, half genuinely uncomfortable.

I hear this constantly. People noticing how many friends are watching their Stories while completely ignoring their grid posts. It’s started to feel oddly mean-girl. Not dramatic, not obvious, just quietly exclusionary. Everyone’s watching. Very few are supporting.

Instagram used to feel fun. You liked your friends’ posts without thinking. Someone posted a blurry photo of a coffee and everyone treated them like a photographer for the day. There were fun filters, no pressure, no sense that you were performing.

That version of Instagram is gone.

Now it feels curated, strategic, and oddly political. With reposting and commentary, it’s become more of a billboard for what you stand for. People are more conscious of what liking or sharing says about them, so they often just don’t.

From a business point of view, though, Instagram is still powerful.

People follow far fewer accounts now. Following is more intentional. So if someone follows your business in 2026, it’s not casual. It’s a choice. Genuinely, you should be quite flattered by it.

That’s also why vanity metrics mean very little now. Follower counts don’t matter. Likes don’t matter. What matters is:

• whether people search for you

• whether they recognise your name

• whether they trust you enough to click, save, DM, or buy

For businesses, this means Instagram can’t be treated in isolation anymore. SEO matters far more. Being discoverable matters more than being followed.

Instagram still converts better than most platforms. Ads work. Influencer marketing, especially with smaller creators, still works. But the fun has gone, the pressure has gone up, and unless you’re doing everything Instagram introduces, your reach will drop.

Instagram hasn’t died, but it’s changed completely.

For businesses, it’s still valuable.

For personal use, it’s become strangely joyless.

YouTube – Still the strongest platform if you can do long-form properly

Best for: Creators, educators, commentators, businesses with depth

Paid ads: Strong, but the content does most of the work

YouTube remains one of the most solid platforms on the internet, largely because it never tried to pretend it was something it isn’t.

It isn’t about quick hits or chasing trends. It’s about people actively choosing to sit down and watch something. That alone puts it in a completely different category to most social platforms.

From a money perspective, YouTube is still the most reliable option for creators. CPMs and RPMs are clearer, more predictable, and generally far healthier than what you’ll see on short-form platforms. Views actually mean something here because they translate into ad revenue, not just vague “reach”. If a video performs, you can see it reflected directly in earnings.

Audiences also understand the model. People don’t resent monetisation on YouTube in the same way they do elsewhere because the value exchange feels fair. You give them 10, 20, 40 minutes of something genuinely useful or entertaining, and ads or sponsorships feel justified rather than intrusive.

The audience quality is stronger too. Subscribers are more loyal, more engaged, and far more likely to follow someone across platforms or support them financially. A YouTube audience actually listens, which feels increasingly rare online.

There’s growing discussion, nothing formally confirmed, but enough noise to be worth paying attention to, that family and child-focused content may finally face stricter demonetisation. If that happens, it would be long overdue. YouTube has been far too comfortable profiting from children being turned into content, and any move away from that would be a positive shift.

From a business perspective, YouTube works brilliantly if you have something to say that can’t be squeezed into 30 seconds. Education, commentary, explainers, behind-the-scenes insight, all perform well here. It also feeds SEO in a way most platforms don’t. Videos rank, thumbnails show up in search, and content can generate views and revenue months or even years after it’s uploaded.

The catch is obvious. Long-form video isn’t easy. You can’t fake it. Watch time matters. Retention matters. If the content isn’t good, the algorithm exposes that quickly. But if you can do it properly, YouTube rewards depth, consistency, and credibility.

So…

No platform is perfect. They all come with trade-offs.

Some are loud. Some are polished. Some are quietly effective. Some are mostly noise.

Social media works best when you stop chasing platforms and start understanding behaviour. Where people actually engage, where trust exists, and where attention turns into action.

Being everywhere isn’t the goal. Being intentional is.