How many people use social media?

              Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2024, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over six billion in 2028.

              Who uses social media?
              Social networking is one of the most popular digital activities worldwide and it is no surprise that social networking penetration across all regions is constantly increasing. As of January 2023, the global social media usage rate stood at 59 percent. This figure is anticipated to grow as lesser developed digital markets catch up with other regions
              when it comes to infrastructure development and the availability of cheap mobile devices. In fact, most of social media’s global growth is driven by the increasing usage of mobile devices. Mobile-first market Eastern Asia topped the global ranking of mobile social networking penetration, followed by established digital powerhouses such as the Americas and Northern Europe.

              How much time do people spend on social media?
              Social media is an integral part of daily internet usage. On average, internet users spend 151 minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of 40 minutes since 2015. On average, internet users in Latin America had the highest average time spent per day on social media.

              What are the most popular social media platforms?
              Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social network worldwide. In June 2023, the top social media apps in the Apple App Store included mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger, as well as the ever-popular app version of Facebook.

This dataset was originally collected for a data science and machine learning project that aimed at investigating the potential correlation between the amount of time an individual spends on social media and the impact it has on their mental health.

The project involves conducting a survey to collect data, organizing the data, and using machine learning techniques to create a predictive model that can determine whether a person should seek professional help based on their answers to the survey questions.

This project was completed as part of a Statistics course at a university, and the team is currently in the process of writing a report and completing a paper that summarizes and discusses the findings in relation to other research on the topic.

The following is the Google Colab link to the project, done on Jupyter Notebook -

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1p7P6lL1QUw1TtyUD1odNR4M6TVJK7IYN

The following is the GitHub Repository of the project -

https://github.com/daerkns/social-media-and-mental-health

Libraries used for the Project -

Pandas
Numpy
Matplotlib
Seaborn
Sci-kit Learn

The global number of Facebook users was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2027 by in total 391 million users (+14.36 percent). After the fourth consecutive increasing year, the Facebook user base is estimated to reach 3.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2027. Notably, the number of Facebook users was continuously increasing over the past years. User figures, shown here regarding the platform Facebook, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.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).

Facebook received 73,390 user data requests from federal agencies and courts in the United States during the second half of 2023. The social network produced some user data in 88.84 percent of requests from U.S. federal authorities. The United States accounts for the largest share of Facebook user data requests worldwide.

*****Documentation Process***** 1. Data Preparation: - Upload the data into Power Query to assess quality and identify duplicate values, if any. - Verify data quality and types for each column, addressing any miswriting or inconsistencies. 2. Data Management: - Duplicate the original data sheet for future reference and label the new sheet as the "Working File" to preserve the integrity of the original dataset. 3. Understanding Metrics: - Clarify the meaning of column headers, particularly distinguishing between Impressions and Reach, and comprehend how Engagement Rate is calculated. - Engagement Rate formula: Total likes, comments, and shares divided by Reach. 4. Data Integrity Assurance: - Recognize that Impressions should outnumber Reach, reflecting total views versus unique audience size. - Investigate discrepancies between Reach and Impressions to ensure data integrity, identifying and resolving root causes for accurate reporting and analysis. 5. Data Correction: - Collaborate with the relevant team to rectify data inaccuracies, specifically addressing the discrepancy between Impressions and Reach. - Engage with the concerned team to understand the root cause of discrepancies between Impressions and Reach. - Identify instances where Impressions surpass Reach, potentially attributable to data transformation errors. - Following the rectification process, meticulously adjust the dataset to reflect the corrected Impressions and Reach values accurately. - Ensure diligent implementation of the corrections to maintain the integrity and reliability of the data. - Conduct a thorough recalculation of the Engagement Rate post-correction, adhering to rigorous data integrity standards to uphold the credibility of the analysis. 6. Data Enhancement: - Categorize Audience Age into three groups: "Senior Adults" (45+ years), "Mature Adults" (31-45 years), and "Adolescent Adults" (<30 years) within a new column named "Age Group." - Split date and time into separate columns using the text-to-columns option for improved analysis. 7. Temporal Analysis: - Introduce a new column for "Weekend and Weekday," renamed as "Weekday Type," to discern patterns and trends in engagement. - Define time periods by categorizing into "Morning," "Afternoon," "Evening," and "Night" based on time intervals. 8. Sentiment Analysis: - Populate blank cells in the Sentiment column with "Mixed Sentiment," denoting content containing both positive and negative sentiments or ambiguity. 9. Geographical Analysis: - Group countries and obtain additional continent data from an online source (e.g., https://statisticstimes.com/geography/countries-by-continents.php). - Add a new column for "Audience Continent" and utilize XLOOKUP function to retrieve corresponding continent data.

*****Drawing Conclusions and Providing a Summary*****

• The data is equally distributed across different categories, platforms, and over the years.
• Most of our audience comprises senior adults (aged 45 and above).
• Most of our audience exhibit mixed sentiments about our posts. However, an equal portion expresses consistent sentiments.
• The majority of our posts were located in Africa.
• The number of posts increased from the first year to the second year and remained relatively consistent for the third year.
• The optimal time for posting is during the night on weekdays.
• The highest engagement rates were observed in Croatia then Malawi.
• The number of posts targeting senior adults is significantly higher than the other two categories. However, the engagement rates for mature and adolescent adults are also noteworthy, based on the number of targeted posts.

Over the five years through 2025-26, industry revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 20.3% to reach £12.5 billion. Social media platforms are integral to people's lives, offering ways to communicate, create and view content and share information. According to Ofcom, approximately 89% of UK internet users in 2023 used social media apps or sites. Teenagers and young adults are the biggest users. Advertising is the primary revenue source for social media platforms, although subscription-based services are gaining momentum as platforms seek to diversify their incomes. TikTok is the success story of the past five years, becoming the most downloaded app between 2020 and 2022, according to Apptopia. The short-form video platform has over 30 million monthly users in the UK in 2025. After Musk's takeover, X, formerly known as Twitter, adjusted its content moderation and allowed previously banned accounts to return. As a result, over 600 advertisers pulled their ads from the site because of fears their brand may be associated with malcontent. In response to falling ad revenue, X has introduced a subscription-based service which enables users to verify themselves and boosts the number of people who view their tweets. Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram have responded by introducing a similar service. In 2025, more social media platforms are using AI to boost user engagement. This improves click-through rates and drives higher advertising revenue. Industry revenue is expected to grow by 6.3% in 2025-26. Over the five years through 2030-31, social media platforms' revenue is projected to climb at an estimated 9.2% to reach £19.4 billion. Regulations relating to how data is collected, stored, and shared will force advertisers and platforms to rethink how they can target their desired demographics. The tightening of regulations will raise industry compliance costs, weighing on profit margin. Older age groups present a new revenue opportunity for social media platforms if they can bridge the gap between passive TV consumption and interactive digital engagement. Augmented Reality (AR) technology will move beyond filters to become standard for immersive product trials, interactive ads, and virtual meetups

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.

The number of social media users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 26 million users (+8.55 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the social media user base is estimated to reach 330.07 million users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of social media users of was continuously increasing over the past years.The shown figures regarding social media users 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).

The report provides a snapshot of the social media usage trends amongst online Canadian adults based on an online survey of 1500 participants. Canada continues to be one of the most connected countries in the world. An overwhelming majority of online Canadian adults (94%) have an account on at least one social media platform. However, the 2022 survey results show that the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in some changes in how and where Canadians are spending their time on social media. Dominant platforms such as Facebook, messaging apps and YouTube are still on top but are losing ground to newer platforms such as TikTok and more niche platforms such as Reddit and Twitch.

How much time do people spend on social media?

              As of 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 143 minutes per day, down from 151 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 three hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in
              the U.S. was just two 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.

The report examines the ways online Canadian adults are engaging politically on social media. This is the third and final report based on a census-balanced survey of 1,500 Canadians using quota sampling by age, gender, and geographical region. The other two reports in this series are: "The State of Social Media in Canada 2017" and "Social Media Privacy in Canada". The series is published by the Social Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab at Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University. The lab studies how social media is changing the ways in which people communicate, share information, conduct business and how these changes are impacting our society.

In 2008, the average human attention span was 12 seconds. Fast forward to 2025, and many studies suggest it's now hovering around 8 seconds, shorter than that of a goldfish. It’s no coincidence that during this same period, social media platforms surged to dominate how we consume content. Whether you're...

Health organizations are increasingly using social media, such as Twitter, to disseminate health messages to target audiences. Determining the extent to which the target audience (e.g., age groups) was reached is critical to evaluating the impact of social media education campaigns. The main objective of this study was to examine the separate and joint predictive validity of linguistic and metadata features in predicting the age of Twitter users. We created a labeled dataset of Twitter users across different age groups (youth, young adults, adults) by collecting publicly available birthday announcement tweets using the Twitter Search application programming interface. We manually reviewed results and, for each age-labeled handle, collected the 200 most recent publicly available tweets and user handles’ metadata. The labeled data were split into training and test datasets. We created separate models to examine the predictive validity of language features only, metadata features only, language and metadata features, and words/phrases from another age-validated dataset. We estimated accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 metrics for each model. An L1-regularized logistic regression model was conducted for each age group, and predicted probabilities between the training and test sets were compared for each age group. Cohen’s d effect sizes were calculated to examine the relative importance of significant features. Models containing both Tweet language features and metadata features performed the best (74% precision, 74% recall, 74% F1) while the model containing only Twitter metadata features were least accurate (58% precision, 60% recall, and 57% F1 score). Top predictive features included use of terms such as “school” for youth and “college” for young adults. Overall, it was more challenging to predict older adults accurately. These results suggest that examining linguistic and Twitter metadata features to predict youth and young adult Twitter users may be helpful for informing public health surveillance and evaluation research.

At present, the use of social media technologies towards our personal everyday lives maintains social awareness, and somehow drives through in order to alleviate the progress of ones personality development. It also allows the general public to use these online media platforms in order to create an opening, and by rediscovering several online media communication and networks such as a particular modern news and/or event. In the recent survey conducted by several research scientists and social media experts, about 90 to 95% of the whole population of the millennials (born in the year 1981-1996) on every community and nation believes that using social media technologies in the Philippines, such as Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and the like can potentially influence the youth of today by encouraging them to post pictures; commenting for whatever local and national controversies; and by simply watching, looking, and listening to any networking profile and leisure related content. And as an adult, we cannot hide the fact that no one prohibits them to use any social media networks, most of our younger ones, because of its visual high demands and unlimited viewing concept. Just like an ordinary TV program or a print ad commercial that everybody can watch into. Because whatever we read, search and listen to, it can make us entertain and satisfy our personal viewing pleasures.

The number of Twitter users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 4.3 million users (+5.32 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Twitter user base is estimated to reach 85.08 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Twitter users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here regarding the platform twitter, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period.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 Twitter users in countries like Canada and Mexico.

Dataset for the following study: Questions remain about what particular dimensions of social media use may be deleterious and for whom. Within a sample of young adults (n= 199) between the ages of 18 to 22 (M = 19.67, SD = 2.139), this investigation examined frequency of consumption of negative social media content and anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and body satisfaction. Only high exposure to negative social media content was associated with poorer wellbeing. Significant interaction effects predicting self-esteem suggest possible differences in these associations as a function of race; with Latinx and black participants reporting low levels of self-esteem when engaging with high negative media content. With regard to gender identity, cisgender women, and people with a non-binary or trans gender identity who engaged frequently with SNSs reported lower body satisfaction compared to cisgender men. Implications for future work are discussed.

ABSTRACT Objectives: To describe the profile of Brazilian older adults who use the Internet, the means of Internet access and the purpose of Internet use and to verify the existence of association between socio-demographic variables and variables related to Internet use. Method: Cross-sectional study with Brazilian older adults who used the social networks Facebook and WhatsApp. Descriptive, univariate, and bivariate analysis were conducted. Results: 384 older adults participated in the study, mostly women (52.08%), with a mean age of 64.6 years old and who used the Internet to address health concerns (65.36%). The main activities on the internet were reading, listening to music, playing games, watching videos and photos (37.30%). The main benefits pointed out were interaction (74.5%), learning (19.2%) and entertainment (19.25%). There were statistically significant differences between time spent online and the variables gender, age, and civil status. Conclusion: This study showed characteristics of older adults who use the Internet and revealed the possibility of using digital technologies to optimize health care for this population.

This report provides a snapshot of the social media usage trends among online Canadians adults in 2017.

The global social media penetration rate in was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 11.6 (+18.19 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the penetration rate is estimated to reach 75.31 and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the social media penetration rate of was continuously increasing over the past years.

Reddit: /r/videos

Insights on Popularity and Content Quality

By Reddit [source]

About this dataset

This dataset explores the media content on Reddit and how it is received by its community, providing detailed insights into both the popularity and quality of subreditvideos. Here you will find data about videos posted on Reddit, compiled from various metrics such as their upvotes, number of comments, date and time posted, body text and more. With this data you can dive deeper into the types of videos being shared and the topics being discussed – gaining a better understanding of what resonates with the Reddit community. This information allows us to gain insight into what kind of content has potential to reach a wide audience on Reddit; it also reveals which types of videos have been enjoying popularity amongst users over time. These insights can help researchers uncover valuable findings about media trends on popular social media sites such as Reddit – so don't hesitate to explore!

More Datasets

For more datasets, click here.

Featured Notebooks

• 🚨 Your notebook can be here! 🚨!

How to use the dataset

How To Use This Dataset

This dataset is a great resource for analyzing the content and popularity of videos posted on Reddit. It provides various metrics such as score, url, comment count and creation date that let you compare the different types of content being shared on the subredditvideos subreddit.

To get started, take a look at the title field for each post. This gives you an idea of what type of video is being shared, which can be helpful in understanding what topics are popular on the platform.

Next, use the score field to identify posts that have done well in terms of receiving upvotes from users. The higher its score, the more popular it has been with viewers. A higher score does not necessarily indicate higher quality however; take a closer look at each post's body field to get an idea for its content quality before making assumptions about its value based solely off of its high score. Having said that, top scoring posts could be considered further when doing research analysis into popular topics or trends in media consumption behavior across Reddit’s userbase (e.g., trending topics among young adults). The url field provides you with links to directly access videos so you can review them yourself before sharing them or forwarding them onto friends or colleagues for their feedback/insight as well (something that could be done further depending on how detailed your research project requires). The comms_num column represents how many comments each video has received which may give insight into how engaged viewers have been when viewing stories submitted by this particular sub-reddit’s members - useful information if interactions/conversations surrounding particular types of content are part of your research objective too! Finally make sure to check out timestamp column as this records when each story was created - important information whenever attempting to draw conclusive insights from time-oriented data points (a time series analysis would serve very handy here!).
Knowing all these features listed above should give researchers an easily accessible source into exploring popularity and quality levels amongst Reddit’s shared media channels – uncovering potentially useful insights related specifically those moving image stories found within subredditvideos are made available via this dataset here!

Research Ideas

• Identifying and tracking trends in the popularity of different genres of videos posted on Reddit, such as interviews, music videos, or educational content.
• Investigating audience engagement with certain types of content to determine the types of posts that resonate most with users on Reddit.
• Examining correlations between video score or comment count and specific video characteristics such as length, topic or visual style

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit the original authors. Data Source

License

License: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) - Public Domain Dedication No Copyright - You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. See Other Information.

Columns

File: videos.csv | Column name | Description | |:--------------|:--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | title | The title of ...