As of February 2021, YouTube had a global penetration rate of 62 percent, followed closely by Meta's Facebook, with 61 percent. Overall, instant messaging service WhatsApp had a global penetration rate of 52 percent. Additionally, 12 percent of people used TikTok, and one in ten people around the world use messaging service Telegram.

As of 2021, Facebook, recently rebranded as Meta, was the social media platform used most often by 47 percent of social networking users in the United States. In 2015, Facebook was the most used platform by 65 percent of social media users, demonstrating a decrease of almost 20 percent. During the same time frame, Instagram has continued to grow in popularity, with 18 percent of users saying it was their most often used platform in 2021, an increase of 11 percent since 2015. Snapchat was the most used platform by 14 percent of respondents in 2018 and has since continued to decline. In 2020, TikTok was the most accessed platform for three percent of users and by 2021 it had more than doubled to seven percent.

Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with more than one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the third quarter of 2023, Facebook reported around four billion monthly core Family product users. The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms Most top ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ or video sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin’s popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network: a little app called TikTok. How many people use social media? The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2022, Social networking sites are estimated to reach 3.96 billion users and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

During a 2021 survey, over 47 percent of responding social media users aged 16 to 34 from the United States had purchased products or services on Instagram. Facebook was the platform named most often, used for purchases by nearly 51 percent of respondents. The phenomenon of making purchases via social channels is called social commerce. Estimates suggest there were over 90 million U.S. social commerce buyers in 2021.

An analysis of over 1,800 influencer campaigns showed that Instagram was the most popular platform for such purposes. It was incorporated into 94 percent of analyzed campaigns. Facebook ranked second, used by 43 percent of campaigns.

TikTok saw an exceptional increase of monthly active users worldwide from 2019 to 2021, at 38 percent. The short-form video sharing app was used by 689 million individuals monthly as of 2021, compared to 500 million in 2019. Other leading social networks that increased with over 30 percent were Pinterest and Reddit.

The coronavirus pandemic is one of the factors that have resulted in an increased interest in social networking, with billions of people in lockdown, working and studying from home, and in need of socializing.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, approximately 44 percent said Facebook was the most important social media platform. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 25 and 21 percent of respondents. Why marketers use social media as a branding channel According to the same study, the leading benefits of social media marketing were increased exposure and traffic. In other words, mastering a brand's presence on such platforms can make a company's products and services known across multiple demographics as well as generate traffic for its online sales. Marketers' favorite social media platforms That survey also revealed that business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers' top social media can vary. While B2C professionals bet on Facebook and its still massive usage rate, B2B strategists focus on LinkedIn, where companies can see and be seen. However, the social media video platforms in which marketers wanted to invest more were Instagram and YouTube.

According to a survey conducted in 2021, Instagram was the top social medial platform used by high school students researching college, with 47 percent of students graduating from high school between 2021 and 2023 using Instagram for college planning. Instagram was also the top social media platform used by high school students in their daily lives.

As of September 2023, Facebook had the largest market share among social media platforms in Africa. The traffic generation capabilities of Facebook in Africa reached 79.4 percent. YouTube was the closest, with a share of 6.6 percent. Overall, Facebook has dominated traffic referrals to other websites on the African continent over the observed period.

According to a survey conducted in July 2021, Facebook was the the most popular social media platform in Ukraine, used by over 60 percent of the survey participants. Measuring at 46 percent, YouTube was the second-leading social network in the country. The share of users of Vkontakte (VK), Odnoklassniki (Ok.ru), LinkedIn, and TikTok did not exceed five percent.

Among Russians who employed social media to find a job, more than 60 percent reported to have used Vkontakte, or VK in 2021. The second most popular social network for employment search was Instagram, as per 28 percent of respondents.

According to a December 2021 survey among social media users in Brazil, Facebook was the leading social media for political information, with 35 percent of the respondents naming the platform as their main source. Also owned by Meta, Instagram and WhatsApp were selected by 27 and 8 percent of the respondents as main source for political knowledge, while the instant messaging and chat-channel app Telegram was the top choice for only one percent of those interviewed.

Social media users were the highest across India as of February 2021 for messaging app Whatsapp, at 530 million. YouTube followed during the same time, with Facebook ranking third. The government in the country introduced new rules under its IT-law earlier that year with the aim of social media platforms self-regulating by focusing on stronger guidelines.

Over 90 percent of surveyed marketing executives in Russia used Instagram in their campaigns as of 2021. The next most popular platforms for social media marketing in the country were Facebook and YouTube.

Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram were reported to be the most actively used social media platforms in Ukraine among those aged 18 to 39 years in January and February 2021. One third of respondents between 40 and 49 years old had an Instagram account. Furthermore, about 70 percent of participants in the age category of 60 years and older did not use social networks at all.

According to a survey from November to December 2021, Facebook was the most used social network for political information among respondents across all educational levels. The Meta-owned platform was most popular among those with a middle school degree, as 44 percent of them claimed to use the network as their main channel for this activity. Meanwhile, Instagram was the top choice by 31 percent of those with a university degree and or/higher education certification for this activity. Overall, 78 percent of the survey's participants claimed to use social media for political discussion.

How many people are on social media? Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities and in 2021, 82 percent of the population in the United States had a social networking profile, representing a two percent increase from the 80 percent usage reach in the previous year. This equals approximately 223 million U.S. social media users as of 2020. Global social media access

According to estimates, the number of worldwide social media users reached 4.2 billion in January 2021. The overall most popular social network based on active users is the American market leader Facebook. In January 2021, Facebook had some 2.74 billion accounts, followed by YouTube and WhatsApp with roughly 2.3 billion and two billion users respectively. The regions with the highest penetration of social media users are Western and Northern Europe.

Social media audiences in the United States Although knowing how many people use social media is a powerful indicator of the tremendous influence such websites and apps have in our day to day life, how people are using them and who these users are is also telling. A report on social media usage released in 2019 shows that among Americans, younger online audiences were more likely to use social networks than older generations. Social media users in the United States use different social networks for a wide range of purposes. In a February 2019 survey, Instagram was the top social network for viewing photos whereas Facebook was more popular for sharing content.

In March 2023, Facebook accounted for 45 percent of all social media site visits in the United States, confirming its position as the leading social media website by far. Other social media platforms, despite their popularity, had to make do with smaller shares of visits across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices combined. Pinterest ranked second with 21 percent of all U.S. social media site visits, while Instagram accounted for 14 percent of the total visits in the country. Additionally, the U.S. is home to the third largest social media audience worldwide.

Facebook: mobile vs desktop usage

At the beginning of 2022, around 81 percent of Facebook users across the globe were using the platform’s social networking services exclusively via mobile phone, while only 1.5 percent reported using their desktop or laptop devices. In October 2021, three Facebook Inc. products occupied the leading positions as most downloaded social networking apps on the Apple App Store in the United States. Facebook’s social media platform ranked first with nearly 2.5 million downloads, while Facebook-owned instant-messaging services Messenger and WhatsApp followed with 2.1 million and 1.4 million downloads respectively.

Social media evolution

Between 2012 and 2020, the daily time spent on social networks worldwide experienced a constant increase, with users reaching an average of 145 minutes per day in 2019 and maintaining the same engagement levels throughout 2020. However, users’ favorite platforms have changed since 2019, and the power balance appears to be shifting further from Facebook’s market dominance. Not only Facebook’s user growth rate is estimated to slow down in the next years, but users belonging to Generation Z appear to prefer video-first social platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.

According to a 2021 survey among social media users in Brazil, Facebook was the most used platform for political information among 39 percent of white respondents and 33 percent of those who identified as Black or Pardo. White respondents had a slightly higher preference for YouTube and WhatsApp, and were the only group to mention Telegram as their main option for this activity. Overall, 78 percent of the survey's participants claimed to use social media for political discussion in the country in 2021.

In 2022, Instagram was the most popular social media platform among Asian influencers, with more than 38 percent of influencers in the region using the platform. YouTube ranked second, after having been the most popular platform among influencers in Asia in 2020 and 2021.