Things are going south fast for social media, with Snap warning overnight of a rapid deterioration over the past month in the “macroeconomic environment”, leading to its shares falling more than 40 per cent so far today.

The difficulties for the parent of camera app Snapchat have spooked investors in its peers as well — Twitter is down 4 per cent, Alphabet 6 per cent, Meta 9 per cent and Pinterest 22 per cent.

All rely on advertising for the bulk of their revenues and Snap said it was expecting revenues for the current quarter to now come in below the low end of its current guidance of 20 to 25 per cent growth year on year. Morgan Stanley analysts said the guidance had already assumed the operating environment became more challenging and that some ad campaigns would be paused or cut. “We expect all online ad platforms to feel some impact of a significant consumer pullback,” they said.