Despite healthy public debate around whether we are spending too much time on social media apps like Instagram and Facebook, artificial intelligence is helping Meta Platforms to keep people hooked on their devices.

The total amount of time users spent playing an Instagram “reel”, or short-form video, in the US in the last three months of 2025 was 30 per cent higher than the same period a year earlier, Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed on a call with analysts after the company reported fourth-quarter results last week. On Facebook, the amount of time users spent watching videos in the US grew “double digits” year-on-year, he said.

On Threads, Meta’s microblogging service that is a rival to Elon Musk’s X, time spent engaging with content was up 20 per cent year-on-year.

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Zuckerberg credited AI tools with much of the engagement growth. Facebook, Instagram and Threads are all benefiting from higher engagement thanks to AI systems that are getting better at recommending content that users are interested in.

Zuckerberg told investors that Instagram engagement is benefiting from changes to its machine learning model so that it considers a longer time period for how users have historically interacted with content to identify the person’s interests. On Facebook, Meta has been able to improve its ranking of content and products on users’ feeds and videos to get people to spend more time watching them.

This year, Zuckerberg said Meta sees “a lot of opportunity” to further increase the amount of time people spend on the apps thanks to AI.

The tools he cited include adding more data to train and improve Meta’s AI models and making AI systems “more responsive to people’s real-time interest”. Meta is also planning to incorporate large language models to better understand how a user engages with content across different Meta apps, which will enable more personalised recommendations.

While short-form videos have been a focus for Meta recently, it expects advances in AI to lead to “an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive”.

Zuckerberg said: “Today, our apps feel like algorithms that recommend content. Soon, you’ll open our apps and you’ll have an AI that understands you and also happens to be able to show you great content or even generate great personalised content for you.”

Investors worried about Zuckerberg’s decision to spend tens of billions of dollars in his quest to develop “personal superintelligence” — a fuzzily-defined vision of AI “that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend and grow to become the person you aspire to be” — are impressed by how AI is already boosting Meta’s core business: the attention economy.

In short, AI is making Meta’s apps more addictive, and higher engagement drives its ability to sell more advertising. This matters because the two biggest factors that drive Meta’s revenue performance are user engagement, and its effectiveness at monetising that engagement over time.

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AI innovations helped boost Meta’s fourth-quarter revenue grew 24 per cent to $59.9 billion. The shares are up 6 per cent since Meta reported earningslast week.

There are lots of social risks to Meta’s business model. If we are all engaged with more personalised feeds that potentially amplify our existing biases, will that make us more divided? And what about the impact of higher social media engagement on mental health and concentration, particularly for children and young adults?

A social media addiction lawsuit filed by a 19-year-old from California, identified as K.G.M., claims she became addicted to social media platforms including Meta’s at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design, according to court filings. An impending trial could see Zuckerberg testify.

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The case risks becoming a “big tobacco” moment for social media companies. One public affairs professional who works with a different major US tech firm told me social media companies have started to discuss internally their potentially problematic role in the attention economy. However, they are not expecting to face US government regulatory intervention.

So far, the White House approach to AI has been to let it run and run, so that the US beats China in the technological race. AI innovation, in any form, is being prioritised over guardrails.