Is Engagement Dead? Why Everyone’s Just Watching, Not Liking

The Learning Curve | Balancing career and personal development in a metropolitan setting.

Your reel gets 50k views. 3 comments. The client asks, “Why is engagement so low?”
The insights were sharp, the caption was snappy, the creative was clean. And then comes the question: “Why didn’t it perform?”

Here’s what I’ve learned recently that sometimes it did perform well. Just not in the way we’re measuring it.

Welcome to the era of silent scrolling.

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Likes and comments were once the currency of the internet.
Now? Attention is passive, people engage in different ways, and the algorithm doesn’t reward “activity” the way it used to.

I realised this during a monthly report review where creatives were hitting great reach, but engagement seemed low. Yet our DMs were flooded with queries.

Not going to lie, explaining that to the client wasn’t easy :’)

So we changed the question. Instead of asking “why aren’t they engaging?”, we started asking “what are they doing after watching?”

And we started focusing on newer metrics:

→ Time spent
→ Saves
→ Profile visits
→ Share via DM
→ Click-throughs
→ Replies

These are the quiet metrics which are subtle signals that people are paying attention. We just need to look in the right place.

For example, we once had a reel hit 1.2M views. Just 15 comments. The client thought it bombed.

What they didn’t see?
→ 200+ saves
→ 60+ profile visits

Low engagement, high intent.

It wasn’t loud. But it worked. it connected emotionally with our audience and that’s a win. Vanity metrics are loud. Real metrics are quiet. It’s our job to listen better.

What this means if you’re working on content:

Don’t panic when the comments are dry. Go deeper. Look at saves, time spent, clicks, DMs, Google search spikes. If a piece of content doesn’t perform on the feed, think: did it spark a conversation off it?

Engagement is no longer about how many clap. It’s about how many care.

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Sharing something personal before I go -

Lately, I’ve started protecting my mornings. No work, no to-do lists. Just one hour of meditation, journaling, and 20 minutes of reading.

Sometimes I play music, sometimes I just sit in silence. Either way, it sets the tone. And honestly? I’ve started looking forward to waking up.

Try it for a few days. Your mornings might surprise you. :D

See you in 2 weeks.

Signing off,
Jin