As of September 2023, YouTube as the most popular social media platform for global users, with 97 percent of respondents reporting to use the popular video platform. YouTube was also the most popular social media among Gen Z users, with 96 percent of respondents in this age group reporting to have used the video platform as of the examined period. Facebook's usage kept steady among among the general digital population, with around eight in 10 reporting to have used the platform. In comparison, the social media's popularity was in free fall among gen Z users with only four in 10 among those surveyed reporting to engage with the Meta-powered platform.

According to a survey conducted in the United States between July 2023 and June 2024, 65 percent of Generation Z were using Meta's Instagram, and 63 percent were using YouTube. Moreover, 58 percent of Gen Z in the United States were on TikTok, and 56 percent were using Facebook.

According to a survey of social media users aged between 16 and 24 years in the United Kingdom, 71 percent of respondents used the Instagram mobile app daily as of October 2022. Approximately seven in 10 respondents reported using social video app TikTok and YouTube on a daily basis, respectively. New social app app BeReal, which prompts users to post content once per day, was used by less than three in 10 respondents aged between 16 and 24 years.

As of September 2024 in the United Kingdom, 98 percent of Generation Z, those born between 1995 and 2012, were using social media. The same was true for 97 percent of millennials in the country. Overall, 92 percent of Gen X were on social networks, as were 86 percent of Baby boomers.

In 2021, messaging and video sharing platform Snapchat was more popular than TikTok among Gen Z users in the United States. TikTok counted around 37 million users who were born between 1997 and 2012, while Instagram reported around 33 million users in the same period. Snapchat, which counted 42 million Gen Z users, is projected to reach 49.5 million users in the examined demographic by 2025. Overall, platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter and Reddit had significantly less users amongst this age group.

According to a survey conducted in the United States in July 2022, three-quarters of Gen Z adults had used YouTube in the past month at least once a day, and 19 percent had used the platform at least once a week. For TikTok, 59 percent of respondents said they had used the platform every day within the past month. Additionally, 72 percent of Gen Z adults said they had not used LinkedIn, and 86 percent reported the same for Clubhouse.

According to a survey conducted among Generation Z in Japan in November 2024, more than 86 percent of the respondents used YouTube. YouTube was the leading social media platform, ahead of Instagram, X, and TikTok.

According to a global survey, in 2023, more than half of global Gen Z respondents stated that they use social media for brand information, compared to 45 percent of them who used search engines. Social media proves to be the more preferred and used channel for brand discovery and information.

WhatsApp was the most popular social media platform for Gen Z, or 15-to-19-year-olds, in the Netherlands in 2020, with nearly all respondents using the service. This according to domestic survey information. The messenger service already ranked as the Netherlands' overall most popular social medium in terms of users. YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat were also very popular, all reaching a penetration rate of over 70 percent. Karaoke app TikTok, on the other hand, was much less popular, as only 17 percent of them used the video application.

Why is TikTok low in this ranking?

Chinese video and sing-along application TikTok, formerly Musical.ly, made a global name as being one of the most popular smartphone apps for Generation Z. Here, it seemingly ranks low as the source used ages 15 and up. This age group might potentially fall outside TikTok’s user base. While there is no data for the Netherlands that investigates the age groups below 15, download numbers suggest the app grew in popularity in the Netherlands after Bytedance (TikTok’s owner) merged Musical.ly and TikTok in August 2018.

A clash of generations
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gen Z uses Instagram and Snapchat much more often than their Millennial counterparts (defined by the source as 20-to 39-year olds). Interestingly, Pinterest was also more popular among the younger generation. The picture gallery app does not rank among the most popular apps in the Netherlands, reaching less than five million people in 2019. Facebook, on the other hand, was more preferred by Millennials than it was by Generation Z.

Gen Z women are more likely than Gen Z men to make purchases via social media in the United States and the United Kingdom. At least 43 percent of female respondents in that generation had experienced buying a product on social networks as of January 2022, while the male usage rate stood at 37 percent. Discovering new brands via social media or visiting brands' social media stores was also more popular among Gen Z women than their male counterparts.

In recent years, social media has taken on a growing significance as a search channel for products and brands, particularly among younger consumers, surpassing search engines. According to a survey conducted in 2022, 48 percent of Gen Z consumers stated that they used social media to gather additional information before making a purchase, whereas 44 percent of respondents relied on search engines for the same purpose.

According to a global survey conducted in 2023, roughly two-thirds of Millennials followed and purchased goods from the social media accounts of brands. Overall, about half of Gen Z users followed and purchased from influencers, whilst just 11 percent of Baby boomers did. Additionally, six out of ten respondents belonging to the Gen X age group followed and purchased from the social media accounts of retailers. A booming market In recent years, social commerce has exploded in popularity among online shoppers. Consumers can now purchase items directly on social media platforms, going from discovery to purchase in a matter of minutes. Social commerce is estimated to reach over one trillion U.S. dollars in revenue by 2028, up from 699 billion in 2024. This new form of e-commerce is the most popular in Thailand, where around 91 percent of online consumers use social sites as a purchase channel. In comparison, this share stood at 57 percent in the United States. Chinese platforms dominate the social space Chinese social shopping sites are the most successful ones worldwide. For example, Douyin, a short-form video sharing app, ranked as the highest revenue-generating platform in 2024, raking in approximately 199 billion U.S. dollars. WeChat, a messaging app, came in second with a revenue of 152 billion dollars, followed by Little Red Book, a picture sharing app, with a revenue of 94 billion dollars. TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, came in sixth place, pulling in 20 billion dollars in revenue. While TikTok's popularity extends globally, its on-app purchase store, TikTok Shop, primarily caters to the Asian market. Thus, it is clear that China is the global leader in social selling.

According to a survey about Generation Z in China, more than 50 percent of respondents expressed aspects of their live to others on social media apps like WeChat Moments, Weibo, Red, Douyin (TikTok), Kuaishou, etc. only once every two to three months or even less. Merely 0.7 percent of respondents posted information about their life on these platforms every day.

According to a January 2023 study of iOS users in the United States, 92 percent of Gen Z users aged between 16 and 25 years used YouTube. Instagram and TikTok followed, with 85 percent and 78 percent of U.S. Gen Z users, respectively. Communication and VoIP platform Discord was used by 42 percent of surveyed U.S. users aged between 16 and 25 years.

According to a survey among internet users conducted in Vietnam by Decision Lab, in the third quarter of 2024, Facebook was considered the primary social media platform by 46 percent of the respondents among Generation Z. Meanwhile, ten percent of them listed the Vietnamese platform Zalo as their primary app.

A report held in June 2022 among Gen Z and millennials in the United States found that these consumers, aged 16 to 40 years old, were using Facebook most often, with 40 percent saying they did so daily or more. LinkedIn, Twitch, and Nextdoor were the least used social sites for news, whereas YouTube and Instagram were used almost as often as Facebook in this respect.

A 2023 survey conducted in Indonesia found that more than half of Generation Z respondents frequently used Instagram. Furthermore, about 36 percent of female respondents used TikTok frequently, compared to 29 percent of male respondents.

According to a survey among Gen Z consumers from 2023, the most used social media platform type was instant messengers in China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Social networks like Facebook were the most popular among Gen Z in Vietnam and Thailand, with 83 and 78 percent of the respondents using it regularly in 2023. About Gen Z consumers in Asia Gen Z consumers are one of the largest cohorts of consumers worldwide. According to a survey, social media websites and apps were widely used product research sources for Gen Z consumers. In China, various consumer electronics were popular among Gen Z consumers, and nearly 87 percent had smartphones in 2022. Popularity of TikTok among Gen Z TikTok is a video-sharing app based in China and saw a massive growth in the number of users in the Asia-Pacific region. About 29 percent of Gen Z respondents in Thailand had spent more than two to four hours a day on TikTok. The advertising reach of TikTok in Asian countries was relatively high, especially in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. With the rise of social commerce, shopping on TikTok is also gaining traction. However, most consumers in the Asia-Pacific region still research inside and outside the app or switch apps while shopping.

WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube ranked as the most popular social media for Dutch Millennials or 20-to-39-year-olds in 2020, beating, for example, Instagram. In 2020, roughly 90 percent of the Millennial respondents in the Netherlands said they used WhatsApp. Facebook was also popular, with 82 percent indicating they actively used this platform. Both social networks had over ten million users in the country, of which 9.1 million were daily users for WhatsApp and 6.8 million for Facebook.

Millennials are less active on Facebook

Despite that Facebook ranks as the second-most popular social media platform, the Silicon Valley application experienced upheaval in the Netherlands. In a different question asked by the source, 57 percent of the Millennials agreed with a statement that said they spent less time on Facebook than they used to. Privacy concerns were one possible explanation for this. Some respondents also mentioned, though, that the platform had become too time-consuming and would rather spend it on “real life” activities.

Instagram and Snapchat a gateway to Generation Z, not Millennials

Are Dutch Millennials leaving Facebook then for other social networks, such as Instagram or Snapchat? The ranking provided here does to indicate that the 23-to-37-year-olds are part of the user base of the two photo apps. Data looking at the growing penetration rate of the two platforms by different age groups in the Netherlands confirms this. This same data does mention, though, that consumers aged 15-19 used the apps a lot more. Between 2015 and 2018, Instagram’s penetration rate among Generation Z increased by roughly 25 percentage points whilst the youngest generation was the first in the Netherlands to use Snapchat.

According to a survey in Spain in March 2023, 91 percent of Generation Z respondents used WhatsApp, making it the most popular social media platform in the country among that population group. Instagram followed closely, with an audience reach of 91 percent, then YouTube and TikTok, each used by 81 percent and 60 percent of Gen Z respondents.