Tumblr may not be THE most popular social media platform (that prize goes to Facebook with over 3 billion monthly active users), but it certainly does have some of the funniest and wittiest guys and girls around. While many millennials have moved on to other pastures, the Gen Z crowd is reportedly flocking to the microblogging platform.
Business Insider revealed that in 2025, 50% of Tumblr's active monthly users were Gen Zers, as were 60% of new users signing up at the time.
One of the possible reasons is because it's seen as a safer space than X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, or Facebook, where politics and influencers reign supreme.
For those unfamiliar with the Tumblr platform, How Stuff Works describes it as a network of millions of user-generated, personal websites.
"It's part blogging platform (like Wordpress or Blogger) and part social networking service, letting users create and post their own original content," notes the site. "Written entries, photographs, video clips, or links to other websites — you can share all of these things with your friends and followers."
Some believe that Tumblr is obsolete, with the New Yorker once referring to the platform as "something like an Atlantis of social networks."
"Once prominent, innovative, and shining, on equal footing with any other social-media company, it sank under the waves as it underwent several ownership transfers in the twenty-tens," wrote Kyle Chayka. But interestingly, Chayka argues that the "shipwreck" nature is what's drawing people back to the Tumblr.
Unlike many other social media sites, Tumblr hasn't undergone any massive makeovers to keep up with modern times. And as we've come to know, many people love a good dose of old school.
"Tumblr’s very status as a relic of the Internet—easily forgotten, unobtrusively designed, more or less unchanged from a decade ago—is making it appealing to prodigal users as well as new ones," explains the New Yorker.
Tumblr launched in 2007, around the same time mobile phones were becoming popular. It led the pack back in the day when it came to curated images.
“It was right at a time when everyone was getting cell phones... you could take a picture from your phone and post it on the Tumblr app,” says Sharon Butler, an artist who used Tumblr for her blog, Two Coats of Paint. “You could have more text than on Twitter, but it was a cooler community than Facebook.”
