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.

Picture a high school hallway during lunch break. Heads down, thumbs scrolling, earbuds in. This isn’t boredom, it’s engagement. For Generation Z, social media isn’t just a way to stay connected; it’s how they navigate identity, find entertainment, and even make purchasing decisions. Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z...

In 2024, more than ** percent of global consumers belonging to Generation Z used social media for customer service proposes, while ** percent of Millennials did the same. Moreover, *** out of five Boomers participated in live shopping events on social media platforms.

******** 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 ********* 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 ** percent. Karaoke app TikTok, on the other hand, was much less popular, as only ** 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 ** 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 **, 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 **** 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 ** 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 ** 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.

During a 2024 survey, 77 percent of respondents from Nigeria stated that they used social media as a source of news. In comparison, just 23 percent of Japanese respondents said the same. Large portions of social media users around the world admit that they do not trust social platforms either as media sources or as a way to get news, and yet they continue to access such networks on a daily basis.

              Social media: trust and consumption

              Despite the majority of adults surveyed in each country reporting that they used social networks to keep up to date with news and current affairs, a 2018 study showed that social media is the least trusted news source in the world. Less than 35 percent of adults in Europe considered social networks to be trustworthy in this respect, yet more than 50 percent of adults in Portugal, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia said that they got their news on social media.

              What is clear is that we live in an era where social media is such an enormous part of daily life that consumers will still use it in spite of their doubts or reservations. Concerns about fake news and propaganda on social media have not stopped billions of users accessing their favorite networks on a daily basis.
              Most Millennials in the United States use social media for news every day, and younger consumers in European countries are much more likely to use social networks for national political news than their older peers.
              Like it or not, reading news on social is fast becoming the norm for younger generations, and this form of news consumption will likely increase further regardless of whether consumers fully trust their chosen network or not.

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.

Social media use among U.S. American consumers for holiday shopping has become more popular in recent years. In 2024, ** percent of Gen Z shoppers intended on buying a holiday gift directly on a social media platform.

As of April 2025, around 17.6 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 25 and 34 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 2023, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, following TikTok and Snapchat. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens reported feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious. However, social media can also have negative effects on teens, which can be 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.

According to a late 2024 survey in the United States, YouTube was the most used social media channel among Generation Z for the purpose of brand interaction, with 66 percent of consumers in this cohort utilizing the platform. Roughly 63 percent of respondents used Instagram for the same purpose.

A survey conducted in August 2022 found that Gen Z news consumers most frequently get their news from social media, with 50 percent of respondents reporting they used social networks as their news source on a daily basis. There was a general preference for online news sources rather than offline outlets among Gen Z, with only five percent saying that they read local newspapers every day.
News consumption: Gen Z vs. millennials The same 2022 study showed that whilst there were similarities between news consumption among millennials and Gen Z, there were also stark differences between the two groups. Gen Zers were significantly less likely to listen to the radio or watch television for news, and close to 60 percent said that they never read newspapers. Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of Millennials reported listening to radio news and 15 percent watched cable or network TV on a daily basis.

Despite these differences, both Gen Z and millennial news audiences both demonstrated a clear preference for using social media to get their news. By contrast, Boomers were the least likely group to use social media for news, generally preferring network news for keeping up to date. Indeed, social networks are not without their problems, with consumers growing concerned about the news they find there. Social media and news Except for podcasts, social media is the least trusted news source in the United States. Fake news circulates there easily as consumers either unknowingly or deliberately share such content, and younger generations, who are the heaviest social media users, are at the highest risk of encountering biased, inaccurate, and untrue stories.

As of May 2024, ** percent of Gen Z respondents spent more time on social media than they did a year ago. Millennials showed a similar dynamic, with ** percent stating that their social media use had increased compared to the previous year.

According to a survey of social media users aged between 16 and 24 years in the United Kingdom, ** percent of respondents reported spending between one and two hours per day using TikTok, while ** percent reported spending between three and four hours per day on the social video app. Video platform ******* commanded the second highest engagement in terms of time spent, with ** percent of respondents reporting spending between one and two hours on the platform, and ** percent of respondents reporting spending five or more hours on YouTube daily. Approximately *** in ** respondents reported spending ** minutes or less daily engaging with the social and photo app BeReal.

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2020 among teenagers and young adults asked participants whether they had a public or private social media profile. Slightly over half reported having a public profile, while only **** percent had made theirs private. ** percent of respondents however claimed to have a mix of both public and private social media profiles. This relatively high level of trust when it came to social media can perhaps be explained by a 2019 survey, where ** percent of respondents in the UK claimed they had never been a victim of social media or email account hacking before.

Facebook and WhatsApp lead in the UK

Among the leading social media platforms, Facebook emerged as the most frequently used among young adults aged 18 to 24 years old in the UK. Nearly ** percent of all respondents cited the social media giant as the app they reached for most often. The second most used app within this age group in the UK was WhatsApp. In contrast, only *** percent used Twitter the most.

Social media – the new marketing trend

As social media becomes more and more integrated into our daily lives, brands have been taking note. Social media marketing is a fast growing industry and spend on social media advertising by corporations has been on the rise each year. What began as a nationwide spend of merely **** billion British pounds in 2011 had risen to **** billion British pounds by 2018. According to an annual survey, roughly ** percent of teenagers aged 12 to 15 already have at least one social media account.

According to a survey about Generation Z in China, social media apps most used by people born between the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2010s to express aspects of their life to other people were WeChat Moments and QQ. Only around *** percent of the respondents used foreign apps like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, as these apps are blocked on mainland China.

According to a survey of social media users conducted in the United Kingdom between April 2023 and March 2024, 67 percent of Generation Z, those born between 1995 and 2012, were using social media daily. The same was true for around 71 percent of Millennials and Generation X users in the country. Surprisingly, Baby Boomers had the highest share of daily usage frequency, as 73 percent of respondents in this age cohort reported engaging with social media daily.

According to a 2024 survey, around 51 percent of leading social media platform users in Brazil were women and 49 percent were men. Among these networks, Reddit and Twitch had the largest proportion of male users, with men making up 64 percent and 62 percent of the audience of each platform, respectively. Conversely, around 67 percent of Pinterest users in Brazil were women. Meanwhile, platforms like Twitch and Tumblr in Brazil had the largest shares of Generation Z users when compared to other mainstream platforms in the country.

As of April 2025, Instagram was slightly more popular with men than women, with men accounting for 52.5 percent of the platform’s global users. Additionally, the social media app was most popular amongst younger audiences, with almost 31.6 percent of users aged between 25 and 34 years. Instagram’s Global Audience As of February 2025, Instagram was the third 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 February 2025, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 413.85 million users, followed by the United States with 171.7 million users. Who is winning over the generations? Even though Instagram’s audience is considerably larger than 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 2024, generating 825.48 million downloads. As of 2022, Generation Z in the United States spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram monthly.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events friends. Global impact of social mediaSocial media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

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, ** percent of Gen Z consumers stated that they used social media to gather additional information before making a purchase, whereas ** percent of respondents relied on search engines for the same purpose.