Without doubt the need to “improve” every image and lead a curated life becomes a drag, perhaps already those that were in from the beginning are tired of that and have moved on. I’d postulate that in terms of actual meaningful engagement we passed “Peak Instagram” possibly 2 years ago, since then things have been gently sliding. In general terms I find myself caring less and less about IG because it doesn’t give handy tools to control the feed and that really matters — we fell for the app (well I did) because it gave me a chance to see things all over the world and share what I saw.

The arguments you apply to Instagram apply in different ways to other social networks where “filters” are applied to project a certain image — thus life with less of those and a focus on in real life connections is what we can expect more people to return to, that requires a deeper level of connection and trust, and that may not be a bad thing.