Alright, first of all, a point of clarification: There are no universal best times to post on social media for every single brand and every business.

Every one of your audiences is unique, their behaviors and interests not the same, and so there's no one-size-fits-all, prescriptive approach that will ensure you get the best results each time you post.

That said, "best times to post" guides are useful both in revealing an overall trend of engagement and nudging you to consider when you might want to begin your experiments to find your ideal posting cadence.

You might write at 4 o'clock one afternoon; it might be smarter to do that at 7 o'clock the next morning, and stories like this get you to think about why this is, what your readers are really looking for, and how your thinking could be trimmed to fit.

So, so, yes, I know, before you respond and comment, that these reports aren't 100% accurate. I know and Sprout Social knows too, but there are still advantages to such data, which might assist you in your planning.

Sprout's new best times to post review is a look at the time where every social app is seeing the most engagement, based on general trends.

Here's the latest data, as it concerns the top social apps, beginning with Facebook.

Based on Sprout's findings, the best times to share on Facebook are during week days between 9 a. m. and midday, while the worst days to share are Sundays.
weekday mornings see more activity, with the 5pm to 6pm period, when people are making their way home, seeing another surge.

That's similar to what Sprout Social reported last year for FB, and though it may seem counterintuitive to posting early in the workday, apparently that is when people are logging on and interacting more.

Also worthwhile of note: Sprout's specific description of its methodology here

"We worked with Sprout's Data Science team to comb through the past year of discoveries and trends on social media from the over 34,000 customers of Sprout Social to see what time of day their posts were most often engaged versus least often, organizing this data by platform and industry."

Engagement is based on Sprout Social posts, not when posts were published.

On Instagram, Sprout says that weekdays between 9am and 2pm are optimal, with less engagement on Friday and the weekend.
For LinkedIn company pages, according to Sprout, the best time is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10a.m. to 12p.m .
And Pinterest, of course. The best time to Pin is between 1am on Tuesdays to Fridays.
Yes, 1 a.m. Why 1 a.m.?
Well, according to Sprout:

"It might be a mix of when users are struck with inspiration and the Pinterest algorithm, affecting how people engage at different times. In short, not particularly clear, but it does seem that there is more engagement in the early hours of the app. Posting on TikTok tends to peak in the afternoon between 2pm to 6pm, Tuesdays through Fridays.
there is also trend of heavy engagement between 9am and 11am on Wednesday and Thursday with other days having significantly lower engagement level.
Conclusion: On X, weekdays between 9am and 3pm are best.
Again, these are just guides and while they do relate to actual engagement rates, of course, results for everyone will differ. You can use summaries such as this to aide you in experiments, looking at best times to post for your business and audience and could perhaps help get you thinking about a strategy and what might be worth trying.