Social media trends are tougher to predict each year. How else to explain the brain rot “6-7” trend that baffled parents and drove a million math teachers into early retirement, or the Labubu Doll delirium that helped toy company Pop Mart on course to hit $4 billion in sales in 2025?
Frankly, most marketers didn’t have either of those on their 2025 social media bingo card, right along with the rise of “Aura Farming” and Unboxing videos (around for two decades now) finally having their moment in the social media spotlight.
Dare we say, social media trends are a bit like a box of Dubai chocolates … you never know what you are going to get. (Apologies to Forrest Gump, in a way an OG social influencer.)
Yes, the Dubai chocolate craze was just one example of how quickly influencers can help trends spread globally at warp speed. So while we can’t predict what will capture the social media zeitgeist next, we can peek under the hood at a landscape that is shifting in ways that go well beyond which platform is hot (see Skylight) and which one is quietly gathering dust (RIP Tumblr?).
The rules around content, discovery, commerce, and community are all being rewritten in real time, and businesses that pay attention stand to gain a real edge.
Digging through the annual trends reports from Sprout Social and HootSuite, and supplementing with insights from brand CMOs at Taco Bell, American Eagle, Chipotle, and Liquid Death, we’ve identified four trends that deserve your attention in 2026.
Let's get the obvious one out of the way: video content is still king. Video is like Elvis, Mufasa, and Muhammad Ali all wrapped into one shiny package: It's been king. It will probably be king for a while.
But what's interesting in 2026 is how that kingdom has evolved.
Short-form video across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts continues to drive massive engagement. Sprout Social notes that TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have all expanded video length options, creating what they call "feature parity," meaning after years of dopamine-hit short clips, audiences are showing signs of wanting more.
Hootsuite's 2026 research points to what they're calling the "micro-drama trend," a term for social-first episodic content that builds narrative over time. Marketing Brew found similar signals, with American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers noting that his predominantly Gen Z audience is "craving deeper understanding, deeper connection." His brand has leaned into longer-form storytelling on platforms like Substack as a result.
The answer isn't to abandon short-form video. It's to think beyond the isolated clip. A single product demo is fine. An ongoing series that gives viewers a reason to come back? That's a brand-builder.
The Takeaway: Start with short-form content that delivers immediate value: tutorials, behind-the-scenes clips, quick customer stories. Then look for opportunities to build recurring series your audience can anticipate.
This is the defining tension of social media in 2026: AI makes content creation easier than ever, and audiences are increasingly weary of content that feels like it came from a robot. Those two facts aren't contradictory. They're related.
Sprout Social's Q3 2025 Pulse Survey found that the number one concern consumers have about brands on social is companies posting AI-generated content without disclosing it (tied for the top spot with mishandling of their personal data).
Meanwhile, 55% of social media users said they are more likely to trust brands that publish human-generated content, a figure that climbs above 60% for Millennials.
The practical answer most marketers are landing on: use AI as a back-end efficiency tool for research, ideation, and drafting, while keeping human judgment and voice front and center. Dan Murphy, SVP of Marketing at Liquid Death, told Marketing Brew he expects to see "more and more AI slop" flood feeds in 2026, which creates real opportunity for brands willing to show up as genuinely themselves. Nicole Weltman, head of social and PR at Taco Bell, predicted the "unhinged social media manager" persona trend will fade, creating white space for brands with distinct, ownable voices to stand out.
The Takeaway: Use AI to work smarter, not to replace the human in your marketing. Your brand's real story, told by real people, is still your greatest competitive advantage.
Nearly one in three consumers now start on social rather than Google when they are looking for information or product recommendations, heading directly to TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube instead, according to Sprout Social's Q2 2025 Pulse Survey. Among Gen Z, 41% now turn to social media first for information. More than 60% of product discovery is happening on social platforms. If your content isn't optimized to be found, you're invisible to the people doing the searching.
Hootsuite flags this as one of the most structurally significant shifts in social strategy. It's no longer enough to post for the people who already follow you. Content needs to be discoverable by people who don't know you exist yet. In practice, that means:
Sprout's research found that 52% of social media users prefer social search over AI chatbots specifically because they want real human experiences and peer recommendations. That's a signal worth acting on.
The Takeaway: Audit your social content through a search lens. If a potential customer searched for what you do on TikTok or Instagram right now, would they find you?
There's an old joke about the brand that spent six months crafting the perfect social media post and then never responded to a single comment on it. That joke isn't funny anymore. It's a cautionary tale.
Sprout Social's 2025 Index found that roughly 75% of social media users expect a brand to reply on social within 24 hours, and the majority said if a brand doesn't respond at all, they'll buy from a competitor. Seventy-seven percent of consumers actively notice whether brands engage in their own comment sections. Not responding is now a negative brand signal.
As Sprout Social consultant Kendall Dickieson put it, "Community management is finally getting its moment again. As brands realize that organic reach depends as much on how they engage as what they post, we're seeing community teams move from reactive to proactive." Sprout's CMO Scott Morris echoed the shift: "The social spotlight is moving from mass reach to meaningful connection."
That's showing up in platform behavior, too. Instagram Broadcast Channels, private Facebook Groups, Substack communities, and niche Discord servers are all growing as users seek smaller, more intentional spaces away from noisy public feeds. Brands that build homes in these spaces, not just outposts, are the ones creating genuine loyalty.
The Takeaway: Community management needs a real owner and a real process. If you're posting but not responding, you're leaving relationships and revenue on the table.
Reading across all four trends, one theme keeps surfacing: the brands winning on social in 2026 are the ones that feel most like people. Not perfectly polished marketing personas. Actual humans who respond to comments, build communities around shared interests, and show up where their customers already are.
The good news for small and mid-size businesses is that authenticity doesn't require a big production budget. It just requires showing up consistently and with real attention to the people on the other side of the screen.
That's something any business can do.
While we can’t explain what “6-7” really means (if you don’t get it … that’s the point!) adWhite Marketing & Design can help businesses cut through the noise with smart, effective digital marketing.