In 2025, there were around 1.53 billion people worldwide who spoke English either natively or as a second language, slightly more than the 1.18 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers at the time of survey. Hindi and Spanish accounted for the third and fourth most widespread languages that year. Languages in the United States The United States does not have an official language, but the country uses English, specifically American English, for legislation, regulation, and other official pronouncements. The United States is a land of immigration, and the languages spoken in the United States vary as a result of the multicultural population. The second most common language spoken in the United States is Spanish or Spanish Creole, which over than 43 million people spoke at home in 2023. There were also 3.5 million Chinese speakers (including both Mandarin and Cantonese),1.8 million Tagalog speakers, and 1.57 million Vietnamese speakers counted in the United States that year. Different languages at home The percentage of people in the United States speaking a language other than English at home varies from state to state. The state with the highest percentage of population speaking a language other than English is California. About 45 percent of its population was speaking a language other than English at home in 2023.

The statistic provides data on favorite music genres among consumers in the United States as of July 2018, sorted by age group. According to the source, 52 percent of respondents aged 16 to 19 years old stated that pop music was their favorite music genre, compared to 19 percent of respondents aged 65 or above. Country music in the United States – additional information

In 2012, country music topped the list; 27.6 percent of respondents picked it among their three favorite genres. A year earlier, the result was one percent lower, which allowed classic rock to take the lead. The figures show, however, the genre’s popularity across the United States is unshakeable and it has also been spreading abroad. This could be demonstrated by the international success of (among others) Shania Twain or the second place the Dutch country duo “The Common Linnets” received in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014, singing “Calm after the storm.”

The genre is also widely popular among American teenagers, earning the second place and 15.3 percent of votes in a survey in August 2012. The first place and more than 18 percent of votes was awarded to pop music, rock scored 13.1 percent and landed in fourth place. Interestingly, Christian music made it to top five with nine percent of votes. The younger generation is also widely represented among country music performers with such prominent names as Taylor Swift (born in 1989), who was the highest paid musician in 2015, and Hunter Hayes (born in 1991).

Country music is also able to attract crowds (and large sums of money) to live performances. Luke Bryan’s tour was the most successful tour in North America in 2016 based on ticket sales as almost 1.43 million tickets were sold for his shows. Fellow country singer, Garth Brooks, came second on the list, selling 1.4 million tickets for his tour in North America in 2016.

Benthic invertebrates are important trophic links in food webs and useful bioindicators of environmental conditions, but long-term benthic organism abundance data across broad geographic areas are rare, and historic data sets are often not readily accessible. This data set for a companion paper by Karatayev et al. (2022) provides densities of benthic macroinvertebrates collected from 1930 to 2019 during surveys in Lake Erie, a Laurentian Great Lake. The surveys were funded by the governments of the United States and Canada to investigate the status and changes in benthic community. From the total of 21 lake- and basin-wide benthic surveys conducted in Lake Erie from 1929 to 2019, we were able to acquire data for 17 surveys, including species-level data for 10 surveys and data by higher taxonomic groups for 7 surveys. Our amassed Lake Erie dataset includes data from 11 surveys (including 5 with species-level data) conducted in the western basin in 1930–2019, 7 surveys (6 with species-level data) in the central basin, and 8 surveys (7 with species-level data) in the eastern basin (1973–2019). This Lake Erie dataset represents the most extensive temporal dataset of benthic invertebrates available for any of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Benthic samples were collected using Ponar or Shipek bottom dredges and taxa densities were calculated as individuals per m2 using the area of the dredge. Density data are provided for taxa in the Annelida, Arthropoda, Mollusca, Cnidaria, Nemertea, and Platyhelminthes phyla. Current taxonomy was used for most groups, but in a few cases, older taxonomic names were used for consistency with historical data. Analysis of this dataset indicated that eutrophication, water quality improvement, and dreissenid introduction were the major drivers of changes in the benthic community in the western basin, while hypoxia was a major factor in the central basin, and dreissenid introduction was most important in the eastern basin. The previously diverse benthic community of the western basin has changed dramatically over 90 years, transitioning from a diverse benthic species assemblage indicative of good water quality in the 1930s to a one of low- diversity assemblage dominated by oligochaetes and other pollution-tolerant species in the 1960s, followed by recovery in the early 2000s to a state similar to that reported in 1930. In contrast, the central basin benthic community has over the past 60 years been consistently dominated by low oxygen-tolerant taxa, signifying the persistence of hypoxia. The eastern basin community changed dramatically in recent decades, with the disappearance of Diporeia after the introduction of Dreissena in the 1990s and more recent declines in oligochaetes, amphipods, gastropods, sphaeriid clams, and leeches. Considering the rarity of high taxonomic resolution long-term benthic data for lake ecosystems, this data set could be useful to explore broader aspects of ecological theory, including effects of eutrophication, hypoxia, invasive species, and other factors on community organization, phylogenetic and functional diversity, and spatial and temporal scales of variation in community structure. In addition, the data set could be useful for studies on individual species including abundance and distribution, species co-occurrence, and how the patterns of dominance and rarity change over space and time. Use of this data set for academic or educational purposes is encouraged. In doing so, we kindly request the data source be properly cited using the title of this dataset, the names of the authors, the year of publication, and the link to Dryad. Methods Lake Erie (surface area 25,690 km2) is one of five Laurentian Great Lakes of North America centered at 42°15’N and 81°15’W. It is bounded on the north by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south, west, and east by the U.S.A. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York (moving west to east). The Canadian and the U.S. water boundaries meet in the middle of the lake. Benthic habitats where samples were collected ranged from depths 2 to 63.5 m. All benthic invertebrate data were collected during surveys conducted in the summer and fall months between 1930 and 2019. Historical basin-wide surveys in Lake Erie varied in sample design, number of stations sampled per year, sampling gear (Ekman, Petersen, Franklin-Anderson, Shipek, and Ponar grabs), the mesh size of the sieve used to wash sediments (180 – 760 µm), and the numbers of surveys per year (Karatayev et al., 2022, Table 1). The level of taxonomic identification and taxa reported also varied among surveys from reporting only Oligochaeta and Hexagenia to reporting all species collected (Karatayev et al., 2022, Table 1). The weight of benthic invertebrates was measured only in a few surveys and different methods and units were used to report biomass, including volume (wet ml/sample) in 1962 – 1965 (Barton, 1988), dry weight in 1978, (Dermott, 1994), and wet weight in 2014 and 2019 (Burlakova et al., 2017; Karatayev et al., 2021). To reconstruct the benthic wet biomass for all years except 2014 and 2019, we multiplied the density of the major taxa (Oligochaeta, Chironomidae, Sphaeriidae Dreissena polymorph and D. r. bugensis, and Hexagenia) by their individual wet weights. Individual wet weights were estimated separately for each taxon and each basin by dividing the taxon's average biomass for 2019 by their average density (Hrycik et al. in preparation). Western basin A total of 18 benthic surveys were conducted in the western basin of Lake Erie between 1929 and 2019 (Karatayev et al., 2022). These studies varied in the number of stations sampled (8 – 63), number of sampling events (1 – 24 samplings), and duration (from a few days to three years). 1929 – 1930. The 1929 – 1930 studies (Wright 1955) were conducted to assess the status of benthic and water resources of western Lake Erie. The 1930 study was one of the first and most extensive benthic studies conducted in the Great Lakes in the early 20th century (Schloesser et al. 2017). In 1929, benthic invertebrates were sampled from 14 stations only, using an Ekman dredge. In 1930 a more extensive survey was conducted that sampled 80 stations using a Petersen dredge (Wright 1955). In addition, the 1929 study was less consistent as different numbers of replicate samples were obtained at individual stations and sampling periods, thus we excluded the 1929 survey from our analysis. Table 1. Lake-wide (or basin-wide) benthic surveys conducted in Lake Erie between 1929 – 2019. Surveys marked with shading were excluded from analysis due to small sample sizes, incompatible methods, or unavailable data.

Sampling Date

Number of stations

Grab sampler type

Mesh size, µm

Taxonomic resolution

Study

Western Basin

1929, June-September

14(13)a

Ekman

500

Groups (genera for selected taxa)

Wright 1955

1930, June-September*

80(67)a

Petersen

500

Groups (genera for selected taxa)

Wright 1955

1961, May-June*

40

Petersen

600

Groups (species for selected taxa)

Carr and Hiltunen 1965

1963-1965 (24 samplings)

11

Franklin-Anderson

500-600

Groups, genera, species

Barton 1988

1967, April-August

42b

Ponar

650

Species

Veal and Osmond 1968

1970, July-August

12

Ponar

760

Groups

Schelske and Roth 1973

1973, June-October (3 samplings)

13

Ponar

425

Groups (species for selected taxa)

Herdendorf 1979; Britt et al. 1980

1979, October

52

Shipek

153

Species

Dermott 1994

1982, June*

40

Ponar

600

Groups, genera

Manny and Schloesser 1999

1992, July-August

9(1)c

Ponar

580/180

Species

Provided by Dermott

1993, September

9(2)c

Ponar

250

Groups, genera

Dermott and Dow 2008

1993, June*

47d

Ponar

600

Groups and genera for selected taxa

Kennedy et al. 2023

1998, April-June

7

Ponar

250

Groups, genera

Dermott and Dow 2008

2003, April-May*

60

Ponar

600

Groups (species for selected taxa)

Kennedy et al. 2023

2009, June, September

14

Ponar

500

Groups, genera, species

Burlakova et al. 2014

2010, March-April*

31d

Ponar

600

Species

Kennedy et al. 2023

2014, April, August*

52(1)c

Ponar

500

Species

Schloesser et al., 2017; Burlakova et al. 2017

2019, April-August*

26(3)c

Ponar

500

Species

Present study

Central Basin

1963-1965 (24 samplings)

45

Franklin-Anderson

500-600

Groups, species

Barton 1988

1973, June-October (3 samplings)

36

Ponar

425

Groups (species for selected taxa)

Herdendorf 1979; Britt et al. 1980

1978, October

52

Shipek

153

Species

Dermott 1994

1979, October

17

Shipek

153

Species

Dermott 1994

1992, July-August

22

Ponar

580/180

Species

Provided by Dermott

1993, September

20(4)c

Ponar

250

Groups, genera, species

Dermott and Dow 2008

1998, April-June

9

Ponar

250

Groups, genera

Dermott and Dow 2008

2009, June, September

18

Ponar

500

Groups, genera, species

Burlakova et al. 2014

2014, August

3(11)c

Ponar

500

Species

Burlakova et al. 2017

2019, July-August

32(17)c

Ponar

500

Species

Present study

East Basin

1963-1965 (24 samplings)

27

Franklin-Anderson

500-600

Groups, species

Barton 1988

1973-1975 only average data available (reported as 1974)

26

Ponar

600

Groups

Flint and Merckel 1978; Mullin 1980

1976, September

25

Ponar

600

Species

Great Lakes Laboratory 1978

1978, October

37

Shipek

153

Species

Dermott 1994

1992, July-August

15

Ponar

580/180

Species

Provided by Dermott

1993, September

10

Ponar

250

Species

Dermott and Dow 2008

1998,

As of April 2024, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years, and 30.6 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44 year age group.

              Instagram users

              With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in India and in the United States, which have respectively 362.9 million and 169.7 million Instagram users each.

              Instagram features

              One of the most popular features of Instagram is Stories. Users can post photos and videos to their Stories stream and the content is live for others to view for 24 hours before it disappears. In January 2019, the company reported that there were 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users. Instagram Stories directly competes with Snapchat, another photo sharing app that initially became famous due to it’s “vanishing photos” feature.
              As of the second quarter of 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users.

As of May 2025, **** percent of Instagram users in the United States were aged between 25 and 34 years, making up the platform’s largest audience in the country. Overall, the group with the second-highest usage was those aged 18 to 24 years, with **** percent of users, followed by **** percent that were aged 35 to 44 years. The age group that used Instagram the least was those older than 65 years, making up *** percent of users, respectively. Popular social media platforms in the United States Instagram was the fourth most visited social media platform in the United States as of March 2025 across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices combined, accounting for ** percent of all social media visits in the country. Despite Instagram’s popularity, Facebook remained the leading social media platform by far in the U.S., accounting for more than ** percent of all social media visits. Pinterest and X (formerly Twitter) ranked second and third in terms of visits, with ***** percent and ***** percent of visits, respectively. Instagram’s global audience Instagram’s global popularity continues to surge, with no signs of slowing down. As of January 2024, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with ****** million users, while the United States had the second-highest market with ***** million users, followed by Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey, respectively. As of February 2025, Instagram was the third most popular social network globally, reaching *** billion monthly active users.

Instagram’s most popular post

              As of April 2024, the most popular post on Instagram was Lionel Messi and his teammates after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup with Argentina, posted by the account @leomessi. Messi's post, which racked up over 61 million likes within a day, knocked off the reigning post, which was 'Photo of an Egg'. Originally posted in January 2021, 'Photo of an Egg' surpassed the world’s most popular Instagram post at that time, which was a photo by Kylie Jenner’s daughter totaling 18 million likes.
              After several cryptic posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself to be a part of a mental health campaign aimed at the pressures of social media use.

              Instagram’s most popular accounts

              As of April 2024, the official Instagram account @instagram had the most followers of any account on the platform, with 672 million followers. Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) was the most followed individual with 628 million followers, while Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) was the most followed woman on the platform with 429 million. Additionally, Inter Miami CF striker Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had a total of 502 million. Celebrities such as The Rock, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Grande all had over 380 million followers each.

              Instagram influencers

              In the United States, the leading content category of Instagram influencers was lifestyle, with 15.25 percent of influencers creating lifestyle content in 2021. Music ranked in second place with 10.96 percent, followed by family with 8.24 percent. Having a large audience can be very lucrative: Instagram influencers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom with over 90,000 followers made around 1,221 US dollars per post.

              Instagram around the globe

              Instagram’s worldwide popularity continues to grow, and India is the leading country in terms of number of users, with over 362.9 million users as of January 2024. The United States had 169.65 million Instagram users and Brazil had 134.6 million users. The social media platform was also very popular in Indonesia and Turkey, with 100.9 and 57.1, respectively. As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social network in the world, behind Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

Cristiano Ronaldo has one of the most popular Instagram accounts as of April 2024.

              The Portuguese footballer is the most-followed person on the photo sharing app platform with 628 million followers. Instagram's own account was ranked first with roughly 672 million followers.

              How popular is Instagram?

              Instagram is a photo-sharing social networking service that enables users to take pictures and edit them with filters. The platform allows users to post and share their images online and directly with their friends and followers on the social network. The cross-platform app reached one billion monthly active users in mid-2018. In 2020, there were over 114 million Instagram users in the United States and experts project this figure to surpass 127 million users in 2023.

              Who uses Instagram?

              Instagram audiences are predominantly young – recent data states that almost 60 percent of U.S. Instagram users are aged 34 years or younger. Fall 2020 data reveals that Instagram is also one of the most popular social media for teens and one of the social networks with the biggest reach among teens in the United States.

              Celebrity influencers on Instagram
              Many celebrities and athletes are brand spokespeople and generate additional income with social media advertising and sponsored content. Unsurprisingly, Ronaldo ranked first again, as the average media value of one of his Instagram posts was 985,441 U.S. dollars.

As of January 2024, Instagram was slightly more popular with men than women, with men accounting for 50.6 percent of the platform’s global users. Additionally, the social media app was most popular amongst younger audiences, with almost 32 percent of users aged between 18 and 24 years.

              Instagram’s Global Audience

              As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social media platform globally, reaching two billion monthly active users (MAU). This number is projected to keep growing with no signs of slowing down, which is not a surprise as the global online social penetration rate across all regions is constantly increasing.
              As of January 2024, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 362.9 million users, followed by the United States with 169.7 million users.

              Who is winning over the generations?

              Even though Instagram’s audience is almost twice the size of TikTok’s on a global scale, TikTok has shown itself to be a fierce competitor, particularly amongst younger audiences. TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app globally in 2022, generating 672 million downloads. As of 2022, Generation Z in the United States spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram monthly.

In 2024, Disney alone accounted for over one-quarter (21.4 percent) of the box office revenue in the United States and Canada, thanks to blockbusters such as "Inside Out 2". Universal ranked second in box office market share at about 20 percent. Warner Bros held a share of approximately 13 percent that year. Disney's superpowers The company's performance at the so-called North American box office led to yet another outstanding placement in the U.S.'s mediascape. In 2024, Disney's box office market share once again stood above 25 percent, a milestone the studio has been achieving every other year since the second half of the 2010s. But an overreliance on superhero stories – noticeable since Disney acquired Marvel in 2009 – may have its days counted. The share of moviegoers in the U.S. saying they were getting tired of so many superhero movies grew by six percentage points between mid-2018 and the end of 2021. Who has the range? Diversity in film genres seems to also be important to attract newer audiences. During a mid-2021 survey, over a third of responding Gen Zers said their main motivation for attending movie theaters was a variety of movie offerings. This segment is key for the cinema industry. Historically, the 12-17 age group has been recording the highest average of movies seen per capita in a theater in the U.S. In 2021, the figure stood at 2.5. Among people aged 50 and above, the average stood below one.

As of April 2024, around 16.5 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide was aged 34 years or younger.

              Teens and social media

              As one of the biggest social networks worldwide, Instagram is especially popular with teenagers. As of fall 2020, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens report feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious.
              Social media can have negative effects on teens, which is also much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that 35 percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported to have experienced cyber bullying when using social media, while in comparison only five percent of teenagers with high social-emotional well-being stated the same. As such, social media can have a big impact on already fragile states of mind.

As of January 2024, #love was the most used hashtag on Instagram, being included in over two billion posts on the social media platform. #Instagood and #instagram were used over one billion times as of early 2024.

As of April 2024, Bahrain was the country with the highest Instagram audience reach with 95.6 percent. Kazakhstan also had a high Instagram audience penetration rate, with 90.8 percent of the population using the social network. In the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Brunei, the photo-sharing platform was used by more than 85 percent of each country's population.

As of April 2024, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook largest audience, accounting for 18.4 percent of global users. Additionally, Facebook's second largest audience base could be found with men aged 18 to 24 years.

              Facebook connects the world

              Founded in 2004 and going public in 2012, Facebook is one of the biggest internet companies in the world with influence that goes beyond social media. It is widely considered as one of the Big Four tech companies, along with Google, Apple, and Amazon (all together known under the acronym GAFA). Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide and the company also owns three other billion-user properties: mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger,
              as well as photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook usersThe vast majority of Facebook users connect to the social network via mobile devices. This is unsurprising, as Facebook has many users in mobile-first online markets. Currently, India ranks first in terms of Facebook audience size with 378 million users. The United States, Brazil, and Indonesia also all have more than 100 million Facebook users each.

As of April 2024, Facebook had an addressable ad audience reach 131.1 percent in Libya, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 120.5 percent and Mongolia with 116 percent. Additionally, the Philippines and Qatar had addressable ad audiences of 114.5 percent and 111.7 percent.

Social network X/Twitter is particularly popular in the United States, and as of February 2025, the microblogging service had an audience reach of 103.9 million users in the country. Japan and the India were ranked second and third with more than 70 million and 25 million users respectively. Global Twitter usage As of the second quarter of 2021, X/Twitter had 206 million monetizable daily active users worldwide. The most-followed Twitter accounts include figures such as Elon Musk, Justin Bieber and former U.S. president Barack Obama. X/Twitter and politics X/Twitter has become an increasingly relevant tool in domestic and international politics. The platform has become a way to promote policies and interact with citizens and other officials, and most world leaders and foreign ministries have an official Twitter account. Former U.S. president Donald Trump used to be a prolific Twitter user before the platform permanently suspended his account in January 2021. During an August 2018 survey, 61 percent of respondents stated that Trump's use of Twitter as President of the United States was inappropriate.