Lamenting one’s social media habits is now just part of the human condition. But it’s not just hopeless doomscrollers who are overexposed to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and their peers. The rapid growth of Meta Platforms, which on Wednesday revealed it had passed $200bn in annual revenue, indicates how much tech dominates investment portfolios and the US economy too — which sets the scene for future fragility.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company is serving up more of everything: revenue, profit, users, time spent online and AI-related capital spending. Meta’s top line, which is mainly advertising fees, swelled by 22 per cent in 2025. It is showing users 18 per cent more ads than a year ago, and charged 6 per cent more for each one, on average. Users are as hooked as ever: they viewed 7 per cent more Facebook posts in the fourth quarter.
Thanks to this kind of performance from Meta and its “hyperscaler” peers, the US leads in tech. But tech leads the US too. The sector makes up over 40 per cent of the S&P 500 by market capitalisation. And of the $19tn the index is forecast to create in revenue over the next year, based on Bloomberg estimates, $1 of every $7 comes from just six companies: Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Nvidia.