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, ** percent of respondents used the ********* mobile app daily as of October 2022. Approximately ***** in ** 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 ***** in ** 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 January 2023 study of iOS users in the United States, ** percent of Gen Z users aged between 16 and 25 years used YouTube. Instagram and TikTok followed, with ** percent and ** percent of U.S. Gen Z users, respectively. Communication and VoIP platform Discord was used by ** percent of surveyed U.S. users aged between 16 and 25 years.

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

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

According to a survey about Generation Z in China, more than ** 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 *** percent of respondents posted information about their life on these platforms every day.

According to a survey conducted in the United States in 2025, Millennials made up ** percent of social media users in the country. Overall, Generation Z accounted for ** percent of the United States' social media audience, and Generation X made up ** percent. Additionally, Baby boomers accounted for just **** percent of users.

******** 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.

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

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 ** percent of the respondents among Generation Z. Meanwhile, *** percent of them listed the Vietnamese platform Zalo as their primary app.

According to a survey in Spain in March 2023, ** 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 ** percent, then YouTube and TikTok, each used by ** percent and ** percent of Gen Z respondents.

In 2024, more than 40 percent of global consumers belonging to Generation Z used social media for customer service proposes, while 38 percent of Millennials did the same. Moreover, one out of five Boomers participated in live shopping events on social media platforms.

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 ** percent of them who used search engines. Social media proves to be the more preferred and used channel for brand discovery and information.

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 2.3 percent of the respondents used foreign apps like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, as these apps are blocked on mainland China.

In 2024, the most popular social media network among Generation Z in Germany was Instagram, with a user share of around ** percent. YouTube and TikTok followed in second place with around ** and ** percent user shares respectively. In contrast, among Baby Boomers, Facebook was the most used social media network, with around ** percent of Boomers using the platform.

According to a 2022 online survey conducted in the United States, ** percent of Generation Z respondents stated they used social media for **** or more hours per day. Overall, just **** percent of respondents said they used it for less than *** hour daily, and *** percent reported they did not use social media.

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.