Cristiano Ronaldo has one of the most popular Instagram accounts as of April 2024.

              The Portuguese footballer is the most-followed person on the photo sharing app platform with 628 million followers. Instagram's own account was ranked first with roughly 672 million followers.

              How popular is Instagram?

              Instagram is a photo-sharing social networking service that enables users to take pictures and edit them with filters. The platform allows users to post and share their images online and directly with their friends and followers on the social network. The cross-platform app reached one billion monthly active users in mid-2018. In 2020, there were over 114 million Instagram users in the United States and experts project this figure to surpass 127 million users in 2023.

              Who uses Instagram?

              Instagram audiences are predominantly young – recent data states that almost 60 percent of U.S. Instagram users are aged 34 years or younger. Fall 2020 data reveals that Instagram is also one of the most popular social media for teens and one of the social networks with the biggest reach among teens in the United States.

              Celebrity influencers on Instagram
              Many celebrities and athletes are brand spokespeople and generate additional income with social media advertising and sponsored content. Unsurprisingly, Ronaldo ranked first again, as the average media value of one of his Instagram posts was 985,441 U.S. dollars.

In 2021, there were 1.21 billion monthly active users of Meta's Instagram, making up over 28 percent of the world's internet users. By 2025, it has been forecast that there will be 1.44 billion monthly active users of the social media platform, which would account for 31.2 percent of global internet users.

How popular is Instagram?

Instagram, as of January 2022, was the fourth most popular social media platform in the world in terms of user numbers. YouTube and WhatsApp ranked in second and third place, respectively, whilst Facebook remained the most popular, with almost three billion monthly active users worldwide.

India had the largest number of Instagram users as of January 2022, with a total of over 230 million users in the country. The second-largest Instagram audience could be found in the United States, with almost 160 million people subscribing to the photo and video sharing app.

Gen Z and Instagram

As of September 2021, Gen Z users in the United States spent an average of five hours per week on Instagram. Although Instagram ranked third in terms of hours per week spent on the platform, Gen Z users spent considerably more time on TikTok, amounting to a weekly average of over 10 hours being spent on the mobile-first video app.

Most followed accounts on Instagram

As of May 2022, Instagram’s own account had 504.37 million followers. In terms of celebrities, Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@chistiano) had over 440.41 million followers on the social network. Moreover, the average media value of an Instagram post by Ronaldo was over 985,000 U.S. dollars.

The most liked post on Instagram as of May 2022 was Photo of an Egg, which was posted in 2019 by the account @world_record_egg. Photo of an Egg has not only exceeded 55 million likes on the platform, but it also has nearly 3.5 million comments, and the account itself has over 4.5 million Instagram followers. After mysterious posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself as part of a mental health campaign aimed at the difficulties and demands of using social media.

As of April 2024, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years, and 30.6 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44 year age group.

              Instagram users

              With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in India and in the United States, which have respectively 362.9 million and 169.7 million Instagram users each.

              Instagram features

              One of the most popular features of Instagram is Stories. Users can post photos and videos to their Stories stream and the content is live for others to view for 24 hours before it disappears. In January 2019, the company reported that there were 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users. Instagram Stories directly competes with Snapchat, another photo sharing app that initially became famous due to it’s “vanishing photos” feature.
              As of the second quarter of 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users.

Instagram data-download example dataset

In this repository you can find a data-set consisting of 11 personal Instagram archives, or Data-Download Packages (DDPs).

How the data was generated

These Instagram accounts were all new and generated by a group of researchers who were interested to figure out in detail the structure and variety in structure of these Instagram DDPs. The participants user the Instagram account extensively for approximately a week. The participants also intensively communicated with each other so that the data can be used as an example of a network.

The data was primarily generated to evaluate the performance of de-identification software. Therefore, the text in the DDPs particularly contain many randomly chosen (Dutch) first names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and URLS. In addition, the images in the DDPs contain many faces and text as well. The DDPs contain faces and text (usernames) of third parties. However, only content of so-called `professional accounts' are shared, such as accounts of famous individuals or institutions who self-consciously and actively seek publicity, and these sources are easily publicly available. Furthermore, the DDPs do not contain sensitive personal data of these individuals.

Obtaining your Instagram DDP

After using the Instagram accounts intensively for approximately a week, the participants requested their personal Instagram DDPs by using the following steps. You can follow these steps yourself if you are interested in your personal Instagram DDP.

1. Go to www.instagram.com and log in
2. Click on your profile picture, go to Settings and Privacy and Security
3. Scroll to Data download and click Request download
4. Enter your email adress and click Next
5. Enter your password and click Request download

Instagram then delivered the data in a compressed zip folder with the format username_YYYYMMDD.zip (i.e., Instagram handle and date of download) to the participant, and the participants shared these DDPs with us.

Data cleaning

To comply with the Instagram user agreement, participants shared their full name, phone number and e-mail address. In addition, Instagram logged the i.p. addresses the participant used during their active period on Instagram. After colleting the DDPs, we manually replaced such information with random replacements such that the DDps shared here do not contain any personal data of the participants.

How this data-set can be used

This data-set was generated with the intention to evaluate the performance of the de-identification software. We invite other researchers to use this data-set for example to investigate what type of data can be found in Instagram DDPs or to investigate the structure of Instagram DDPs. The packages can also be used for example data-analyses, although no substantive research questions can be answered using this data as the data does not reflect how research subjects behave `in the wild'.

Authors

The data collection is executed by Laura Boeschoten, Ruben van den Goorbergh and Daniel Oberski of Utrecht University. For questions, please contact l.boeschoten@uu.nl.

Acknowledgments

The researchers would like to thank everyone who participated in this data-generation project.

Instagram’s most popular post

              As of April 2024, the most popular post on Instagram was Lionel Messi and his teammates after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup with Argentina, posted by the account @leomessi. Messi's post, which racked up over 61 million likes within a day, knocked off the reigning post, which was 'Photo of an Egg'. Originally posted in January 2021, 'Photo of an Egg' surpassed the world’s most popular Instagram post at that time, which was a photo by Kylie Jenner’s daughter totaling 18 million likes.
              After several cryptic posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself to be a part of a mental health campaign aimed at the pressures of social media use.

              Instagram’s most popular accounts

              As of April 2024, the official Instagram account @instagram had the most followers of any account on the platform, with 672 million followers. Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) was the most followed individual with 628 million followers, while Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) was the most followed woman on the platform with 429 million. Additionally, Inter Miami CF striker Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had a total of 502 million. Celebrities such as The Rock, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Grande all had over 380 million followers each.

              Instagram influencers

              In the United States, the leading content category of Instagram influencers was lifestyle, with 15.25 percent of influencers creating lifestyle content in 2021. Music ranked in second place with 10.96 percent, followed by family with 8.24 percent. Having a large audience can be very lucrative: Instagram influencers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom with over 90,000 followers made around 1,221 US dollars per post.

              Instagram around the globe

              Instagram’s worldwide popularity continues to grow, and India is the leading country in terms of number of users, with over 362.9 million users as of January 2024. The United States had 169.65 million Instagram users and Brazil had 134.6 million users. The social media platform was also very popular in Indonesia and Turkey, with 100.9 and 57.1, respectively. As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social network in the world, behind Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

As of January 2024, Instagram was slightly more popular with men than women, with men accounting for 50.6 percent of the platform’s global users. Additionally, the social media app was most popular amongst younger audiences, with almost 32 percent of users aged between 18 and 24 years.

              Instagram’s Global Audience

              As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth 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 January 2024, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 362.9 million users, followed by the United States with 169.7 million users.

              Who is winning over the generations?

              Even though Instagram’s audience is almost twice the size of 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 2022, generating 672 million downloads. As of 2022, Generation Z in the United States spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram monthly.

This dataset investigates the Instagram engagement metrics (likes and comments) of the U.S. and British Armies to understand their strengths and weaknesses in their marketing. For the quantitative data collection, a random number generator was used to compile a 20% data sample (73 posts) from a total of 365 posts from each account. For instance, a number 1 in the random generator corresponded to the most recent post from the start date of data collection (May 23rd, 2024). By picking from 365 posts, the data collection was meant to represent roughly a year of Instagram content, assuming their Instagram accounts posted every day. This method ensured an unbiased representation of which content was included in the 20% data sample.However, the U.S Army posted almost once a day while the British Army posted only a few days a week. In the end, data was collected across 365 U.S. Army posts from May 23rd, 2024, to October 28th, 2023. For the British Army’s Instagram, the data collection span from May 23rd, 2024, to November 25th, 2021. By engaging with recent posts, the purpose was to understand how effectively these Armies responded to their recruitment crisis (which started in 2022).For the data collection, variables for each post included the following:Date of postNumber of likesPercentage of likes by follower populationNumber of commentsPercentage of comments by follower populationTo understand which Instagram posts were successful, the content with the highest number of likes and comments were defined as the most engaged. But, to accurately compare the British Army’s Instagram engagement to the U.S., the number of likes/comments was divided by the number of their followers. As of May 23, 2024, the U.S. Army had 2.9 million followers on Instagram whereas the British Army had 594,000 followers. While social media users outside of the Armies’ followers engaged with the posts, these ratios provided a basis to fairly compare their engagement metrics.

This table includes platform data for Facebook participants in the Deactivation experiment. Each row of the dataset corresponds to data from a participant’s Facebook user account. Each column contains a value, or set of values, that aggregates log data for this specific participant over a certain period of time.

As of April 2024, around 16.5 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 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 2020, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens report feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious.
              Social media can have negative effects on teens, which is also 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.

This dataset provides a detailed collection of Apple App Store reviews for a selection of popular mobile applications, including Uber, Waze, Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, Pinterest, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Tinder, and Instagram. It offers insights into public perception and user feedback over several years. The data can be used to extract sentiments and trends, identify app versions that received the most positive or negative feedback, and apply topic modelling to pinpoint common user pain points within these applications.

Columns

• index: A unique identifier for each review record.
• date: The specific date when the review was submitted.
• pseudoUserId: A pseudonymous identifier for the user who submitted the review.
• userName: The username of the reviewer.
• title: The title provided by the user for their review.
• review: The full text content of the user's review.
• rating: The numerical rating given by the user, typically on a scale of 1 to 5.
• isEdited: A boolean indicator showing whether the review has been edited (true) or not (false).
• country: The country from which the review originated.
• applicationName: The name of the application being reviewed.

Distribution

The dataset is typically provided in a CSV format. It contains approximately 174,508 records (rows) covering reviews for various applications. The distribution of ratings is as follows: 47,192 reviews are rated between 1.00 and 1.08, 15,217 between 1.96 and 2.04, 17,774 between 3.00 and 3.08, 18,183 between 3.96 and 4.04, and 76,143 between 4.92 and 5.00. The majority of reviews (173,886) are unedited, while 623 reviews have been marked as edited. The number of unique user IDs is 121,028, and there are 173,654 unique usernames.

Usage

This dataset is ideal for: * Sentiment analysis to gauge public opinion on specific app features or overall user satisfaction. * Trend analysis to observe changes in user feedback over time for different app versions. * Identifying pain points through topic modelling of review content, helping app developers prioritise improvements. * Market research to understand user needs and competitive landscapes within the mobile app ecosystem.

Coverage

The dataset primarily covers Apple App Store reviews from the US region. The reviews span a time period from September 2017 to November 2023.

License

CC0

Who Can Use It

• Data Scientists and Analysts: For building predictive models, performing natural language processing (NLP) tasks, and extracting actionable insights from unstructured text data.
• App Developers and Product Managers: To understand user feedback, identify bugs, and inform future product development and updates.
• Market Researchers: For competitive analysis, understanding user sentiment towards specific apps, and identifying market opportunities.
• Academics and Students: For research projects related to user experience, mobile app trends, and sentiment analysis.

Dataset Name Suggestions

• Apple App Store User Reviews (US)
• Mobile Application Feedback Dataset
• App Store Review Data (2017-2023)
• US App Store Public Perception Data

Attributes

Original Data Source: 🏆Uber, FB, Waze, etc US Apple App Store Reviews

Dataset based on Twitter usernames of American politicians. Data extracted from Wikidata.

The same politician can appear several times: if he has different pseudonyms on Twitter or Instagram, if he has been in several parties, or if several Twitter account IDs are associated with him. But the data is sorted in ascending order by name, so it is visible

This dataset encompasses social media exposure to sponsored posts, collected from over 150,000 triple-opt-in first-party U.S. Daily Active Users (DAU). Use it for measurement, attribution or brand lift surveying. Platforms covered include Facebook, TikTok, X, Instagram and YouTube.

Platform ad type coverage includes News Feed, Stories and In-Stream Videos on Facebook ; Feed and Reels on Instagram ; Feed on TikTok ; Timeline on X ; Pre-Roll on YouTube.

About the dataset

Authors: Igor Althoff Vidal & Renato Maciel

This is the dataset from the method to identify the Domestic Violence Signal. This project has the objective to identify women's (or any person) that seeks for help using the Domestic Violence Signal, in front of public cameras.

Red Signal against domestic violence

If a woman is in an emergency, can draw an 'X' using a lipstick or a pen in the inner part of the hand, the draw can be showed to a drugstore or a bank attendant. The employee from the store will then call the police. There are similar movements worldwide as the "End It Movement" in the USA.

Data Gathering

The images were extracted from the Instagram hashtag #sinalvermelho pt-br, which is a place where the community engaged can share their movement. The dataset was cleaned in two steps:

1. Crop the images to select only the hands with the red signal
2. Blur the parts of the faces and sensitive parts from the images (nose, mouth, eyes).

In case your image appear here, and you would like to remove from the dataset, please write us.

For more information

Check the Medium post about this project at: https://bit.ly/3FJU4mS

As of April 2024, Bahrain was the country with the highest Instagram audience reach with 95.6 percent. Kazakhstan also had a high Instagram audience penetration rate, with 90.8 percent of the population using the social network. In the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Brunei, the photo-sharing platform was used by more than 85 percent of each country's population.

📊 postoptimizing – Social Media Post Optimization Dataset

This dataset contains user-submitted social media posts along with the target platform (e.g., Instagram, X, LinkedIn), and an improved version of the post generated by a finetuned Zephyr model.

  🧾 Dataset Structure

Each sample includes:

input platform output

Original post text Platform Optimized post (generated)

input: The original raw post provided by the user
platform: The social media… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/MariamBM/postoptimizing.

As of January 2024, #love was the most used hashtag on Instagram, being included in over two billion posts on the social media platform. #Instagood and #instagram were used over one billion times as of early 2024.

As of April 2024, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook largest audience, accounting for 18.4 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.

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.

As of April 2024, Facebook had an addressable ad audience reach 131.1 percent in Libya, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 120.5 percent and Mongolia with 116 percent. Additionally, the Philippines and Qatar had addressable ad audiences of 114.5 percent and 111.7 percent.