“The maximum average engagement rate year to date for this selection of branded accounts was 1.54% on April 15, 2019. The minimum engagement rate was 0.8% on June 23, 2019.”

Source: Instagram Declining and the Rise of… TikTok? – Business 2 Community

Instagram continuously tweaks their “engagement algorithm”. When you post a photo on Instagram, the InstaAlgorithm displays it initially to a group of your followers and measures “engagement” based on likes and comments. If your photo has low engagement, then it will be shown to fewer of your followers – your photo basically disappears.

But if your photo has high engagement, then Instagram thinks it must be a good photo and the photo is displayed to more of your followers. For Instagram, it’s all about “engagement”.

Facebook is similar – neither shows you all the posts of those you follow but only those posts that their algorithms think you will be interested in seeing. This approach to social media can be frustrating for both the poster and the followers. For example, I follow a photographer on Instagram who only posts occasionally – I always “like” her photos. But Instagram virtually never displays her photos in my “feed”. Instead, I have to manually go to her Instagram page to see her latest posts. So why bother to have a feed?

The consequence of these algorithmic choices is that fewer and fewer of us are checking Instagram. I’ve logged in once in the past 2 weeks.