No, the user base is not very small. There are more than 1.3 million Steem accounts.
The number of the daily active users is small, and nowadays constantly decreasing (dropping/falling). The engagement is low, because the majority of the Steem blockchain users are selfish and greedy, which makes people disappointed in the platform, and therefore the existing users leave, and the potential new users just/only avoid the platform.

Nowadays there are about 25 000 daily active accounts. Most of them are focusing on their own blogs. People published 59 675 posts in the first week of 2020, but the average number of comments is only 3.38. This speaks for itself.

Things will not change themselves. People need to change (their behavior).
Otherwise the Steem blockchain will soon become a ghost town.