From a personal perspective:

I have a niche Instagram account that goes out to find content and then "reposts" it. There were several fun aspects of this e.g. finding good content, writing my own little algorithm to prioritize contents from older posts on smaller accounts etc.

Lately, much as others have said, you are seeing entire accounts of AI generated images that are high quality, near photo realistic and consistent e.g. it looks like the same person in different scenes/times of day etc

You sometimes hear the quote about "pre-war steel" that hadn't been hit by radiation and that's EXACTLY what it feels like looking for an account with posts from before ~2022.

I wonder if the above means that people are going to spend less time online and prioritize "in real life" events or if the slop is just going to get more addicted.

Probably a mix of both in the same way that Tough Mudder/Spartan Races became popular while at the same time the number of other people NOT leaving their houses went up.

the great bifurcation will continue apace

The only missing piece is hiding the time something was posted :) Why would anyone use any of those crap websites is beyond me.