Inside Instagram 2025
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Inside Instagram 2025: A Data-Driven Study at Hashtags, Celebrity Engagement, and Follower Trends

Instagram in 2025 is more than a photo app. It is a cultural engine where trends start, products launch, and celebrities shape conversations. Engagement has dropped by 28 percent compared to last year, yet the platform still drives discovery for billions of users worldwide.

This report, powered by Snoopreport.com data from July 2025 and supported by recent industry research, reveals how hashtags, celebrity behavior, and follower trends are shifting. From holiday hashtags that dominate feeds to the rise of micro-influencers and the surprising ways celebrities interact with their own content, the findings highlight what truly matters on Instagram today.

Our goal is simple: provide brands, creators, and journalists with clear, data-driven insights into how Instagram works in 2025 and where it is heading next.

Executive Summary

The July 2025 Instagram data from Snoopreport.com uncovers major shifts in how users, influencers, and celebrities engage on the platform. While overall engagement has dropped, certain behaviors and content types continue to thrive.

  • Hashtag TrendsHoliday-driven tags like #happy4th (+128%) and #4thofjuly (+97.6%) spiked in popularity, while evergreen tags such as #fyp and #explore remained dominant but saw a relative decline.
  • Unfollows RisingSmaller creators like @coleescola experienced the highest unfollow rates, showing that micro-influencers face more volatility compared to mega accounts such as @hasbulla.hushetskiy, which remain stable despite their size.
  • Celebrity EngagementCelebrities boosted hashtags such as #fyp, #explore, #fitness, and #love, while also showing unexpected behaviors. Some, including @lewishowes and @jlo, liked their own posts, and cross-likes between celebrities revealed unseen networks of influence.
  • Gender DynamicsEngagement patterns showed clear gender skews in post-liking activity, suggesting brands should tailor content strategies by demographic.

Overall, the findings reveal that Instagram in 2025 is shaped by seasonal hashtag surges, shifting follower loyalty, and celebrity-driven engagement patterns. These insights can guide brands and creators toward smarter campaign strategies in the future.

Trending Hashtags in 2025: Holiday Peaks vs Evergreen

Trending Hashtags in 2025

The July 2025 data from Snoopreport.com reveals a striking divide between hashtags tied to cultural events and those that drive engagement year-round. Seasonal moments, like the Fourth of July, sparked dramatic spikes. #happy4th surged by 128 percent, while #happy4thofjuly rose by 99 percent. Related tags such as #4thofjuly, #fourthofjuly, and #independenceday also climbed sharply as users flooded feeds with patriotic content. These hashtags generated short-lived but highly concentrated bursts of activity.

By contrast, evergreen hashtags continued to provide a steady backbone for discovery. Tags like #fyp, #explore, and #explorepage remained some of the most used across the platform, even as their growth rates slowed compared to seasonal surges. Lifestyle and fitness-focused hashtags, including #summer, #fitness, #gym, and #love, maintained consistent traction, proving their long-term relevance in everyday posting habits.

Together, the findings highlight the importance of a dual approach. Seasonal hashtags are powerful for amplifying visibility during cultural events, while evergreen hashtags ensure that content continues to reach audiences outside of those moments. 

The strongest strategies in 2025 combine both, reacting quickly to holiday trends while anchoring campaigns with tags that work month after month.

Engagement Decline & Platform Evolution

Instagram in 2025 remains a cultural hub, but engagement is falling. Industry benchmarks from Socialinsider (2025) and SMK Digital (2025) report that average brand engagement on Instagram has dropped by 28 percent year over year, now averaging around 0.50 percent. This shows that likes and comments are no longer reliable indicators of performance.

Meanwhile, Instagram’s own algorithm is evolving. Short-form video formats such as Reels and multi-slide carousels are prioritized, rewarding content that keeps users engaged longer. The platform is also shifting its weight toward saves and shares, metrics that represent deeper interactions than likes.

For brands and creators, this means strategies need to adapt. Consistent posting still matters, but long-term growth depends on producing content that encourages replay, sharing, and community conversation rather than simply accumulating likes.

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Unfollow Rates: Micro vs Macro Influencers

Unfollow Rates

The July 2025 Snoopreport.com data reveals a clear pattern in follower churn: smaller creators and niche accounts often lose followers at a faster rate compared to larger, more established profiles.

At the top of the list is @coleescola, with 155,038 followers and losing the equivalent of about 1 follower per 5,000 each day. Other accounts with under 200,000 followers, such as @mikementzers (190,727 followers, about 1 in 9,000 per day) and @henrydavis1900 (114,531 followers, about 1 in 8,000 per day), also appeared among the hardest hit. These numbers show that micro-influencers and niche communities are more volatile, with audiences quick to disengage if content shifts or fails to resonate.

By contrast, macro-influencers and celebrity-level accounts show much more stability. For instance, @hasbulla.hushetskiy (8.4M followers) loses around 1 follower out of every 80,000 each day, while @gervontaa (6.7M followers) averages about 1 in 35,000 per day. Even highly active cultural accounts like @moronsdoingthings (1.7M followers) maintain lower proportional churn than many smaller creators. This suggests that scale offers resilience: once influencers reach a certain threshold, they are less vulnerable to sudden swings in audience behavior.

The data also points to a middle tier of creators—between 300,000 and 1 million followers—who face mixed outcomes. For example, @bmarshall (675,004 followers, about 1 in 20,000 per day) and @kazumisworld (344,871 followers, about 1 in 26,000 per day) sit between extremes, showing that both community management and content strategy may determine whether mid-level accounts stabilize or slide toward higher churn.

Strategic Insight

For brands, these numbers matter when choosing collaborators. While micro-influencers often deliver higher engagement rates, they also face higher risks of churn, which can erode campaign stability. Macro accounts may appear less personal but offer steadier reach. The strongest influencer strategies in 2025 balance both: tapping into the authenticity of small creators while leveraging the resilience of larger personalities.

Celebrity Engagement Patterns

Celebrity Engagement Patterns

Celebrities continue to play a central role in shaping Instagram culture, and the July 2025 Snoopreport.com data highlights several revealing behaviors. From the hashtags they interact with to the ways they engage with each other’s posts, these patterns show how influence spreads across the platform.

Hashtags Celebrities Like the Most

Celebrities tend to amplify the same hashtags that drive mainstream visibility. The most popular among them are #fyp (144 likes), #explore (133 likes), and #explorepage (100 likes). Niche celebrity-driven hashtags also stand out, such as #jlo (92 likes), #nkotb (73 likes), and #jenniferlopez (67 likes). Lifestyle and fitness remain strong with #fitness, #art, #gym, and #fashion all appearing in the top tier.

These choices suggest that while celebrities follow the same discovery-driven hashtags as the general public, they also reinforce their personal brands by liking niche or self-referential tags.

Cross-Liking Between Celebrities

One of the more surprising findings is the frequency of cross-likes, where a celebrity likes another celebrity’s post without following them. Examples include SZA liking @siriusxm, Jennifer Aniston liking @allthingscomedy, and Sarah Jessica Parker liking @newshour. These interactions expand reach far beyond existing fan bases and hint at how organic influence circulates among public figures.

For brands and creators, these moments represent valuable opportunities: a single like from a celebrity, even without a follow, can trigger wider visibility and credibility.

Celebrities Who Like Their Own Posts

Self-liking behavior may appear unusual, but the data confirms it happens across both small and massive accounts. @lewishowes (3.3M followers) topped the list with 44 self-likes, while even mega-celebrities such as @jlo (253M followers) and @chancetherapper (19M followers) appeared with multiple self-likes. Smaller accounts such as @nightgallery (36 self-likes) and @dailychiefers (29 self-likes) also showed consistent use of this tactic.

This suggests that self-liking is being used strategically, likely to signal algorithmic engagement boosts or to prime audiences for further interactions.

Strategic Insight

For marketers, celebrity engagement patterns carry two key lessons. First, celebrities validate the importance of evergreen discovery hashtags (#fyp, #explore), proving they remain critical for reach. Second, celebrity cross-likes and even self-likes illustrate that algorithmic visibility tactics are not limited to small creators — even high-profile accounts rely on them.

Sources

  • Snoopreport.com – Instagram Celebrity Engagement Data, July 2025

Gender Dynamics: Who Likes What?

Gender Dynamics

The July 2025 Snoopreport.com data provides a snapshot of gender-based engagement on Instagram, comparing the number of likes from male versus female users across demographic groups. Female engagement consistently outpaces male engagement across most segments, especially among younger audiences. This is an important signal for brands and creators who want to emphasize relevance and tone in their strategies.

Globally, Instagram’s user base is nearly evenly split at 50.6 percent male and 49.4 percent female, making it one of the most gender-balanced social platforms. 

In the United States, women now hold a slight majority of users, while in certain regions such as India, the audience skews heavily male. These regional differences show how gender distribution on Instagram shifts depending on market and culture.

Historical insights from HopperHQ revealed that women receive five times more likes per post than men and around one-third more comments on average. 

Male users are also ten times more likely to like or comment on women’s accounts than on those run by other men. This pattern highlights not only greater female engagement but also the higher visibility and traction female-led content attracts.

Content preferences further illustrate the divide. Women are more likely to engage with lifestyle, fashion, and community-driven content, while men tend to focus on tech, gaming, and sports, with variations across different regions and cultures. These behavioral patterns are echoed by reports from DataReportal, Product London Design, and Amra and Elma LLC, showing how content categories appeal differently depending on gender.

Taken together, these findings underscore a consistent pattern: women engage more actively across broader Instagram content, particularly in lifestyle and influencer categories. Male engagement, by contrast, tends to concentrate in niche or visually dynamic verticals.

To maximize reach and resonance, brands and creators should tailor strategies according to audience. For female-leaning segments, especially in lifestyle, beauty, or community-driven verticals, content that sparks conversation, such as Stories, polls, and relatable posts—performs best. 

For male-leaning or mixed demographics, content in tech, fitness, or gaming works more effectively, especially when delivered through visually dynamic formats such as Reels or infographics. Regional nuances also need to be considered, since cultural context shapes gender-based engagement patterns across markets.

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Strategic Best Practices for 2025

The 2025 Instagram landscape shows a platform in transition. Engagement has dropped overall, but opportunities remain strong for brands and creators who adapt to new patterns in hashtags, celebrity influence, and audience behavior. Data from Snoopreport.com (July 2025) combined with benchmarks from Socialinsider, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial points to several best practices for the year ahead.

Prioritize Quality Engagement Over Likes

With Instagram’s algorithm valuing saves and shares more than likes, content should aim to spark deeper interaction. Carousels, Reels, and storytelling posts that encourage users to save for later or share with friends outperform static images. This shift is confirmed by Socialinsider’s 2025 Engagement Report, which highlights that saves now drive greater visibility than likes alone.

Blend Evergreen and Seasonal Hashtags

Snoopreport data shows holiday hashtags like #happy4th (+128%) can create viral bursts, while evergreen tags like #fyp and #explore remain reliable for steady reach. The strongest strategies combine both: jumping on cultural moments for visibility while maintaining evergreen hashtags for long-term discovery.

Balance Micro and Macro Influencers

Micro-influencers often deliver higher engagement but face higher churn rates. For example, @coleescola lost about 1 in 5,000 followers per day in July, while macro accounts like @hasbulla.hushetskiy lost only 1 in 80,000. Brands should mix micro-influencers for authenticity with macro influencers for reach and stability.

Leverage Celebrity Engagement Patterns

Celebrity behavior reinforces what works. Celebrities amplify hashtags like #fyp, #explore, and #fitness, cross-like each other’s posts to extend reach, and even self-like to boost visibility. These patterns prove that even high-profile accounts use algorithmic tactics—and brands can do the same by encouraging team members and partners to engage with posts at launch.

Align Content With Gender Dynamics

Women drive the majority of likes across most demographics, while men engage heavily with sports, fitness, and tech. Campaigns should reflect this split: fashion, beauty, and lifestyle campaigns should lean female-focused, while gaming, sports, and fitness campaigns can balance toward male audiences. Regional context matters—female-majority engagement in the U.S. contrasts with male-heavy engagement in markets like India.

Invest in Short-Form Video and Interactive Content

Instagram continues to prioritize Reels, Stories, and Carousels. Short-form video drives more reach, while interactive tools (polls, Q&A, stickers) improve participation. According to SproutSocial’s 2025 benchmarks, brands that post a mix of static and short-form formats see stronger retention than those sticking with single formats.

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Beauty Industry EMV Drop in Q1 2025

Beauty Industry EMV Drop in Q1 2025

The beauty industry has long been one of Instagram’s most dominant verticals, driving billions in Earned Media Value (EMV) through influencer partnerships and user-generated content. However, the start of 2025 revealed a significant slowdown. According to Vogue Business, beauty brands recorded a 28% drop in EMV during Q1 2025 compared to the same period the previous year. This decline signals both audience fatigue and increased competition from other platforms like TikTok, which continues to capture younger consumers with short-form, trend-driven content.

Several factors explain the downturn:

  • Market saturation: With thousands of beauty influencers producing repetitive content, audiences are showing signs of engagement fatigue. Tutorials and product hauls that once guaranteed strong performance now struggle to break through the noise.
  • Platform shifts: TikTok and YouTube Shorts have eaten into Instagram’s dominance, offering formats that better align with spontaneous, authentic beauty storytelling. Younger audiences, in particular, favor TikTok’s “unpolished” content style over Instagram’s curated aesthetic.
  • Declining engagement rates: As reported by Socialinsider, Instagram brand engagement has fallen across industries, and beauty has been no exception. The industry’s historic reliance on likes and comments is proving less effective in 2025 as algorithms shift toward valuing saves, shares, and watch time.

Despite the downturn, opportunities remain. Niche beauty brands are finding success by leaning into micro-influencers who cultivate tight-knit communities, offering more authentic product recommendations. Similarly, brands that diversify into Reels, behind-the-scenes content, and interactive Stories see stronger retention than those sticking with static product posts.

The broader lesson is that while Instagram is no longer a guaranteed growth engine for beauty, it still plays a pivotal role. Success now depends on quality over quantity, with campaigns designed to stand out in a crowded market and optimized for the algorithm’s preference for meaningful interactions.

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Micro-Influencer Success Story

While macro accounts continue to command reach and stability, the data shows that micro-influencers remain the most powerful drivers of authentic engagement on Instagram in 2025. A recent Socialinsider report confirmed that creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers generate up to 60% higher engagement rates compared to their larger counterparts. This advantage stems from their ability to maintain stronger, more personal relationships with their communities.

Micro-Influencer Success Story

While macro accounts continue to command reach and stability, the data shows that micro-influencers remain the most powerful drivers of authentic engagement on Instagram in 2025. A recent Socialinsider report confirmed that creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers generate up to 60% higher engagement rates compared to their larger counterparts. This advantage stems from their ability to maintain stronger, more personal relationships with their communities.

The July 2025 Snoopreport.com dataset supports this finding. Smaller accounts like @coleescola (155k followers) and @mikementzers (190k followers) demonstrated high levels of churn volatility, yet they also gained traction rapidly during trend-driven moments such as seasonal hashtags. This shows that while follower loyalty can be fragile for smaller creators, their audiences respond quickly to cultural cues, making them ideal partners for short, high-impact campaigns.

Several factors explain the micro-influencer advantage:

  • Authenticity and trust: Followers perceive micro-influencers as more relatable, with content that feels genuine rather than overly polished. This trust translates directly into higher engagement and stronger conversion rates for sponsored campaigns.
  • Community intimacy: Smaller creators often engage directly with their audience through comments, DMs, and Stories. This two-way interaction builds loyalty that macro influencers cannot easily replicate at scale.
  • Trend responsiveness: Micro-influencers are quicker to adopt viral hashtags and challenges, ensuring that their content feels timely and relevant. Snoopreport’s July data showed that many micro-creators capitalized on seasonal hashtags like #happy4th to spike engagement.
  • Cost-effectiveness: From a brand perspective, partnering with multiple micro-influencers is often more affordable than securing a single macro partnership, while delivering stronger cumulative ROI.

Despite their volatility in unfollow rates, the strategic value of micro-influencers lies in authentic storytelling and community-driven reach. Brands looking to cut through Instagram’s declining overall engagement should consider deploying campaigns that leverage clusters of micro-influencers, balancing short-term engagement spikes with longer-term visibility from macro accounts.

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Popular Niche Trends: Home Décor Hashtags

Instagram’s influence extends far beyond fashion, beauty, and fitness. In 2025, niche lifestyle communities such as home décor have become powerful engagement hubs, attracting millions of users who share, discover, and curate design inspiration.

Popular Niche Trends

A Times Union lifestyle report highlights the rise of décor-related hashtags that now rival mainstream lifestyle categories. The standout is #modernhome, which surpassed 5.7 million posts in 2025, while #homedecortrends reached over 1.2 million posts. These numbers demonstrate that home décor has evolved into a strong cultural niche, where visual storytelling drives both aspiration and consumer decision-making.

This trend reveals several important dynamics:

  • Community-driven discovery: Décor hashtags function as search engines for design inspiration, connecting everyday homeowners with influencers, designers, and brands.
  • Cross-industry relevance: Even brands outside the décor industry—such as tech, retail, or wellness—can position themselves within this lifestyle space by associating with aspirational interiors. For instance, fitness or beverage brands increasingly appear in “aesthetic home setups” tagged under décor trends.
  • Longevity of lifestyle niches: Unlike seasonal hashtags that spike during holidays, décor tags are evergreen. People seek inspiration year-round, making these hashtags a reliable long-term visibility strategy.
  • Influencer alignment: Interior bloggers and décor-focused creators are emerging as trusted voices, with engagement rates that rival those in fashion and beauty. Partnering with these creators enables brands to reach aspirational audiences without competing directly in oversaturated markets like beauty.

In practice, the rise of home décor hashtags proves that Instagram remains an ecosystem of micro-communities, each with its own aesthetic, audience, and influence. For marketers, tapping into décor trends offers a way to diversify content strategies, reach untapped demographics, and benefit from the aspirational halo effect that lifestyle content creates.

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Conclusion & PR Angle

Instagram in 2025 is a platform in transition. Overall engagement is down, but the data proves that opportunities remain strong for brands, creators, and marketers who adapt. From the holiday hashtag spikes (#happy4th, +128%) to the resilience of evergreen discovery tags like #fyp and #explore, the platform rewards those who blend cultural relevance with consistent visibility.

Celebrity behavior underscores this shift. Even high-profile accounts rely on tactics like cross-liking, hashtag amplification, and self-liking to maximize algorithmic reach. Meanwhile, micro-influencers stand out as the authentic growth engines, delivering up to 60% higher engagement rates than macro accounts. Finally, niche communities such as home décor (#modernhome, 5.7M posts) show that influence is no longer limited to fashion or beauty—Instagram thrives on micro-communities that shape cultural taste.

Methodology

This case study was conducted using Instagram activity data from Snoopreport.com (July 2025), supplemented with external industry benchmarks from Socialinsider, Vogue Business, Hootsuite, SproutSocial, and Times Union.

  • Hashtag Analysis: Based on Snoopreport’s tracking of new and trending hashtags in July 2025, comparing percentage growth, old vs. new usage counts, and celebrity engagement.
  • Unfollow Rates: Derived from Snoopreport’s “Bloggers with Highest Unfollow Percentage” dataset, reformatted into digestible “1 in X followers lost per day” for clarity.
  • Celebrity Engagement Patterns: Data on celebrity-liked hashtags, cross-likes, and self-likes collected from Snoopreport’s July 2025 Instagram monitoring.
  • Gender Dynamics: Based on Snoopreport gender-liker assessment, contextualized with demographic data from Hootsuite, HopperHQ, and Dash Hudson.
  • Industry Benchmarks: Beauty industry EMV decline sourced from Vogue Business; influencer ROI benchmarks from Socialinsider and Influencer Marketing Hub; niche trends like home décor hashtags from Times Union.

The study combines quantitative Instagram activity tracking (Snoopreport datasets) with qualitative industry reports to deliver a holistic, data-driven analysis of Instagram in 2025.