With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. The platform surpassed two billion active users in the second quarter of 2017, taking just over 13 years to reach this milestone. In comparison, Meta-owned Instagram took 11.2 years, and Google’s YouTube took just over 14 years to achieve this landmark. As of January 2022, Facebook’s leading audience base was in India, with almost 330 million users whilst the United States ranked second with an approximate total of 179 million users. The platform also finds remarkable popularity in Indonesia and Brazil. Social Media usage in the United States In January 2021, Facebook was the platform on which users in the United States spent the most time per day. The average time spent on Facebook was 33 minutes, followed by TikTok with 32 minutes and Twitter with 31 daily minutes. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all major social media platforms saw an increase in daily usage, which then either plateaued or decreased in 2021. At the end of 2021, over a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group and 18.2 percent of users were in the 35 to 44 year age group. In general, Facebook users were more likely to be female. Meta Platforms Meta is Facebook’s recently renamed parent company and had a grand total of 3.59 billion core product users by the final quarter of 2021. Other Meta products include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus – Meta’s virtual reality subsidiary which produces VR headsets. In 2021, Meta's revenue amounted to 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous financial year.

As of March 2025, Google represented 79.1 percent of the global online search engine market on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents the lowest share ever recorded by the search engine in these devices for over two decades. Meanwhile, its long-time competitor Bing accounted for 12.21 percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over 2.9 percent each. Google and the global search market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2024, with a market capitalization of 2.02 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2024 with roughly 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over 33 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 21 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

As of February 2025, 5.56 billion individuals worldwide were internet users, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent of the world's population, were social media users. Global internet usage Connecting billions of people worldwide, the internet is a core pillar of the modern information society. Northern Europe ranked first among worldwide regions by the share of the population using the internet in 20254. In The Netherlands, Norway and Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the population used the internet as of February 2025. North Korea was at the opposite end of the spectrum, with virtually no internet usage penetration among the general population, ranking last worldwide. Eastern Asia was home to the largest number of online users worldwide – over 1.34 billion at the latest count. Southern Asia ranked second, with around 1.2 billion internet users. China, India, and the United States rank ahead of other countries worldwide by the number of internet users. Worldwide internet user demographics As of 2024, the share of female internet users worldwide was 65 percent, five percent less than that of men. Gender disparity in internet usage was bigger in African countries, with around a ten percent difference. Worldwide regions, like the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe, showed a smaller usage gap between these two genders. As of 2024, global internet usage was higher among individuals between 15 and 24 years old across all regions, with young people in Europe representing the most significant usage penetration, 98 percent. In comparison, the worldwide average for the age group 15–24 years was 79 percent. The income level of the countries was also an essential factor for internet access, as 93 percent of the population of the countries with high income reportedly used the internet, as opposed to only 27 percent of the low-income markets.

Key YouTube Statistics (Editor’s Choice) YouTube recorded 70 billion monthly active users in March 2023, which includes 55.10% of worldwide active social media users. There have been more than 14 million daily active users currently on YouTube, in the United States of America this platform is accessed by 62% of users. YouTube is touted as the second largest search engine and the second most visited website after Google. Revenue earned by YouTube in the first two quarters of 2023 is around $14.358 billion. In 2023, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have recorded 80 million subscribers collectively worldwide. YouTube consumers view more than a billion hours of video per day. YouTube has more than 38 million active channels. In the fourth quarter of 2021, YouTube ad revenue has been $8.6 billion. Around 3 million paid subscribers to access YouTube TV. YouTube Premium has around 1 billion paid users. In 2023, YouTube was banned in countries such as China excluding Macau and Hong Kong, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and South Sudan. With 166 million downloads, the YouTube app has become the second most downloaded entertainment application across the world after Netflix. With 91 million downloads, YouTube Kids has become the sixth most downloaded entertainment app in the world. Nearly 90% of digital consumers access YouTube in the US, making it the most popular social network for watching video content. Over 70% of YouTube viewership takes place on its mobile application. More than 70% of YouTube video content watched by people is suggested by its algorithm. The average duration of a video on YouTube is 12 minutes. An average YouTube user spends 20 minutes and 23 seconds on the platform daily. Around 28% of YouTube videos that are published by popular channels are in the English language. 77% of YouTube users watch comedy content on the platform. With 247 million subscribers, T-Series has become the most subscribed channel on YouTube. Around 50 million users log on to YouTube every day. YouTube's biggest concurrent views record has been at 2.3 billion from when SpaceX has gone live on the platform to unveil Falcon Heavy Rocket. The majority of YouTube users are in the age group of 15 to 35 years in the US. The male-female ratio of YouTube users is 11:9. Apple INC. has been touted as the biggest advertiser on YouTube in 2020 spending $237.15 million. YouTube produced total revenue of $19.7 billion in 2020. As of 2021, the majority of YouTube users (467 million) are from India. It is the most popular platform in the United States with 74 percent of adult users. YouTube contributes to nearly 25% of mobile traffic worldwide. Daily live streaming on YouTube has increased by 45% in total in 2020. In India, around 225 million people are active on the platform each hour as per the 2021 statistics. YouTube Usage and Viewership Statistics #1. YouTube accounts for more than 2 billion monthly active users Around 2.7 billion users log on to YouTube each month. The number of monthly active users of YouTube is expected to grow even further. #2. Around 14.3 billion people visit the platform every month The number of YouTube visitors is far higher compared to Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram. #3. YouTube is accessible across 100 countries in 80 languages. The platform is widely available across different communities and nations. #4. 53.9% of YouTube users are men and 46.1% of women use the platform As of 2023 statistics, 53.9% of men use the platform and 46.1% of women over 18 years are on YouTube. The share in the number of males and females is 1.38 billion and 1.18 billion respectively. Age Group Male Female 18 to 24 8.5% 6% 25 to 34 11.6% 8.6% 35 to 44 9% 7.5% 45 to 54 6.2% 5.7% 55 to 64 4.4% 4.5% Above 65 4.3% 5.4% #5. 99% of YouTube users are active on other social media networks as well. Fewer than 1% of YouTube users are solely dependent on the platform. #6. Users spend around 20 minutes and 23 seconds per day on YouTube on average It is quite a generous amount of time spent on any social network platform. #7. YouTube is the second most visited site worldwide With more than 14 billion visits per month, YouTube has become the second most visited site in the world. However, its parent company Google is the most visited site across the globe. As per the statistics, YouTube is the third most popular searched word on Google. #8. 694000 hours of video content are streamed on YouTube per minute YouTube has outweighed Netflix as well in terms of streaming video content. #9. Over 81% of total internet users have accessed YouTube #10. Nearly 450 million hours of video content are uploaded on YouTube each hour More than 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube per day. #11. India has the maximum numb

Introduction

YouTube Statistics: YouTube dominates the digital landscape with 2.70 billion monthly active users among the world population in mid-2025, making it the second-largest search engine after Google and the second social platform, following Facebook, across the world.

People watch more than 1 billion hours of video on YouTube, that’s a million years of attention span. With over 20 million new videos uploaded to the platform every day, the YouTube content ecosystem is practically endless. Short-form video lovers have not been ignored.

With an astonishing 70 billion views a day on YouTube shorts, these viewers are generating a new level of interactions and engagement across the platform. Of course, mobile dominates; 63% of watch time happens on mobile devices. With over 100 million subscribers to YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, in addition to free, YouTube is indeed a premium entertainment platform.

Key Navigation StatisticsTop Navigation AppsNavigation App RevenueGoogle Maps RevenueNavigation Revenue by CountryNavigation App UsageMapping and navigation apps are a ubiquitous element of...

Despite the growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, e-mail is an integral part of daily online life. In 2023, the number of global e-mail users amounted to **** billion and is set to grow to **** billion users in 2027. Global e-mail audiencesIn 2023, approximately *** billion e-mails were sent and received every day worldwide. This figure is projected to increase to over *** billion daily e-mails in 2027. As of July 2022, Apple Mail Privacy accounted for over half of the e-mail opens, while mobile use of e-mails saw a significant decrease in their market shares. Apple MPP e-mail app was the most popular e-mail client, accounting for ** percent of e-mail opens. Gmail, the free e-mail service owned by Google, was ranked second with a ** percent open share. Malicious mailMany online users use e-mails for website and newsletter signups and brace themselves for the inevitable flood of spam and marketing communications. Whereas most unwanted e-mails are annoying yet ultimately benign, consumers are right to be wary of malicious e-mail that can be used to compromise their digital accounts and devices. In 2023, ** percent of fraud reports in the United States related to cases in which victims were contacted via e-mail.

As of the third quarter of 2024, internet users in South Africa spent more than **** hours and ** minutes online per day, ranking first among the regions worldwide. Brazil followed, with roughly **** hours of daily online usage. As of the examined period, Japan registered the lowest number of daily hours spent online, with users in the country spending an average of over **** hours per day using the internet. The data includes the daily time spent online on any device. Social media usage In recent years, social media has become integral to internet users' daily lives, with users spending an average of *** minutes daily on social media activities. In April 2024, global social network penetration reached **** percent, highlighting its widespread adoption. Among the various platforms, YouTube stands out, with over *** billion monthly active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms. YouTube’s global popularity In 2023, the keyword "YouTube" ranked among the most popular search queries on Google, highlighting the platform's immense popularity. YouTube generated most of its traffic through mobile devices, with about 98 billion visits. This popularity was particularly evident in the United Arab Emirates, where YouTube penetration reached approximately **** percent, the highest in the world.

As of February 2024, over a third of online users worldwide were aged between 25 and 34 years. Website visitors in this age bracket constituted the biggest group of online users worldwide. Also, 19 percent of global online users were aged 18 to 24 years. The global digital population aged 65 or older represented approximately 4.2 percent of all internet users worldwide. Social media usage and Meta Social media is a major driver of internet use, with a global penetration rate of 62.2 percent. On average, internet users spend 143 minutes per day on social media, highlighting its significant impact on daily online activities. The usage of social media is mostly dominated by Meta platforms, which own four of the largest social media platforms. Facebook leads the ranking with over three billion active users, followed by Instagram and WhatsApp. Instagram's global popularity Meta’s social video platform, Instagram, had long been one of the most engaging social media platforms worldwide, and it was projected to reach 1.44 billion monthly active users. Instagram was particularly favored by users aged 18 to 34, thanks to its ability to offer a variety of interactive content, from images and carousels. This diverse range of content types was a key factor in its popularity among its young user base.

In February 2025, the YouTube's mobile app was the most popular smartphone app in the United States, with approximately 167 million unique monthly users in the country on iOS and Android combined. Gmail followed with approximately 148 million monthly active users, while Facebook was reported having 146.6 million active users in the examined month. In the United States, the mobile internet user penetration is set to reach 92.5 percent of the population in 2029. Some of the most popular app categories on the Apple App Store are dedicated to gaming, business, or education. In July 2021, casual mobile gaming app Black Blast! was the most popular game for iPhone users, with more than 1.66 million downloads. Mobile social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, are still among the most popular social apps for mobile users in the country. However, video apps YouTube and TikTok have quickly become users' favorite social media. In June 2021, the popular short-video app TikTok was counting more than 6.5 million downloads from iOS users in the United States during the last quarter of 2023.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimising your website so that it ranks higher in the Google search results. SEO produces one of the highest ROIs of any marketing activity you can do. But the SEO industry is dominated by one search engine – Google. Google has the highest market share with 78.83% of all searches coming through Google. Bing has 12.23% and Yahoo just 3.07%.

The global number of smartphone users in was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 1.8 billion users (+42.62 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the smartphone user base is estimated to reach 6.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of smartphone users of was continuously increasing over the past years.Smartphone users here are limited to internet users of any age using a smartphone. The shown figures have been derived from survey data that has been processed to estimate missing demographics.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of smartphone users in countries like Australia & Oceania and Asia.

As of February 2025, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook's largest audience, accounting for 18.5 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.

Google had a clear monopoly on the mobile search engine market across India, with a share over 99 percent as of February 2024. While the search engine's position as the market leader is evident, it is worth noting that its mobile market share declined marginally over the past year - conceded to India's second-biggest mobile search engine, DuckDuckGo.

As of February 2025, India was the country with the largest YouTube audience by far, with approximately 491 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. The United States followed, with around 253 million YouTube viewers. Brazil came in third, with 144 million users watching content on YouTube. The United Kingdom saw around 54.8 million internet users engaging with the platform in the examined period. What country has the highest percentage of YouTube users? In July 2024, the United Arab Emirates was the country with the highest YouTube penetration worldwide, as around 94 percent of the country's digital population engaged with the service. In 2024, YouTube counted around 100 million paid subscribers for its YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services. YouTube mobile markets In 2024, YouTube was among the most popular social media platforms worldwide. In terms of revenues, the YouTube app generated approximately 28 million U.S. dollars in revenues in the United States in January 2024, as well as 19 million U.S. dollars in Japan.

In March 2025, ChatGPT’s mobile app recorded over 64.26 million App Store and Google Play downloads worldwide. Google's Gemini AI Assistant mobile app was released on February 8, 2024, and was initially available in the U.S. market only. In the same month, the app registered around 13.92 million downloads. Regional preferences shape AI app adoption ChatGPT has a strong global presence with over 400.61 million monthly active users in February 2025, but regional preferences vary. In the United States, ChatGPT had a 45 percent download market share, compared to Google Gemini's 11 percent. However, Gemini emerged as the preferred generative AI app in India, representing a 52 percent market share. This competitive landscape now also includes Chinese-based players like ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek, indicating an even more diverse and evolving AI worldwide ecosystem. The AI-powered revolution in online search The global AI market has experienced substantial growth, exceeding 184 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 and projected to surpass 826 billion U.S. dollars by 2030. This expansion is mirrored in user behavior, with around 15 million adults in the United States using AI-powered tools as their first option for online search in 2024. Additionally, 68 percent of U.S. adults reported the use of AI-powered search engines for exploring new topics in 2024, with another 44 percent of respondents utilizing these tools to learn or explain concepts.

In November 2024, Google.com was the most popular website worldwide with 136 billion average monthly visits. The online platform has held the top spot as the most popular website since June 2010, when it pulled ahead of Yahoo into first place. Second-ranked YouTube generated more than 72.8 billion monthly visits in the measured period. The internet leaders: search, social, and e-commerce Social networks, search engines, and e-commerce websites shape the online experience as we know it. While Google leads the global online search market by far, YouTube and Facebook have become the world’s most popular websites for user generated content, solidifying Alphabet’s and Meta’s leadership over the online landscape. Meanwhile, websites such as Amazon and eBay generate millions in profits from the sale and distribution of goods, making the e-market sector an integral part of the global retail scene. What is next for online content? Powering social media and websites like Reddit and Wikipedia, user-generated content keeps moving the internet’s engines. However, the rise of generative artificial intelligence will bring significant changes to how online content is produced and handled. ChatGPT is already transforming how online search is performed, and news of Google's 2024 deal for licensing Reddit content to train large language models (LLMs) signal that the internet is likely to go through a new revolution. While AI's impact on the online market might bring both opportunities and challenges, effective content management will remain crucial for profitability on the web.

In 2023, Google Maps was the most downloaded map and navigation app in the United States, despite being a standard pre-installed app on Android smartphones. Waze followed, with 9.89 million downloads in the examined period. The app, which comes with maps and the possibility to access information on traffic via users reports, was developed in 2006 by the homonymous Waze company, acquired by Google in 2013.

Usage of navigation apps in the U.S. As of 2021, less than two in 10 U.S. adults were using a voice assistant in their cars, in order to place voice calls or follow voice directions to a destination. Navigation apps generally offer the possibility for users to download maps to access when offline. Native iOS app Apple Maps, which does not offer this possibility, was by far the navigation app with the highest data consumption, while Google-owned Waze used only 0.23 MB per 20 minutes.

Usage of navigation apps worldwide In July 2022, Google Maps was the second most popular Google-owned mobile app, with 13.35 million downloads from global users during the examined month. In China, the Gaode Map app, which is operated along with other navigation services by the Alibaba owned AutoNavi, had approximately 730 million monthly active users as of September 2022.

The number of active social media users in Ethiopia was **** million as of 2024. This was a significant increase from **** million in 2014. However, according to the source, significant revisions have been conducted to the base data, making it incomparable with previous years. In 2023, "Ethiopia" was the keyword with the largest number of searches on Google in the country.

As of February 2025, Nigeria had 107 million internet users - the highest number reported all over Africa. Meanwhile, Egypt ranked second with over 96 million users. The majority of web traffic in leading digital markets in Africa originated from mobile devices - in Nigeria, one of the countries with the largest number of internet users worldwide, 86.2 percent of web traffic was generated via smartphones and roughly 13.3 percent via PC devices. This is due in part to the fact that mobile connections are much cheaper and do not require the infrastructure that is needed for traditional desktop PCs with fixed-line internet connections. Anticipating remarkable growth: Africa's internet user surge and projected milestones The projected trend for Africa indicates a consistent rise in internet users from 2024 to 2029. It will have a collective addition of 337.3 million users (equivalent to a growth of 51.79 percent). Following fifteen successive years of growth, the user count is anticipated to reach a record high of 1.1 billion by 2029. Furthermore, the online penetration rate on the continent was 43 percent – which was below the global average, measured at around 68 percent. Unveiling internet trends The region has witnessed a steady increase in internet users over the years. In January 2024, Southern Africa stood out as the African region with the most substantial internet penetration rate, reaching approximately 73.1 percent. The proportion of individuals accessing the internet in this part of Africa and Northern Africa surpassed the global average (66.2 percent). Moreover, Morocco boasted an impressive internet penetration of about 91 percent, securing its position as Africa's foremost country. Libya held the second position with a penetration rate of approximately 88 percent, followed closely by Seychelles at around 86.7 percent.