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.

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.

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.

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.

This dataset belongs to:van Driel, I. I., Pouwels, J. L., Beyens, I., Keijsers, L., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2019). ‘Posten, scrollen, appen en snappen’: Jongeren (14-15 jaar) en social media in 2019, Center for Research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media (CcaM), Universiteit van Amsterdam.For the final publication and a full description of the dataset, see the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/v5txz/.Please create your own OSF project to share with others how you worked with these data and refer to this dataset.

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.

About this dataset

Context

The dataset tabulates the data for the Media, PA population pyramid, which represents the Media population distribution across age and gender, using estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates. It lists the male and female population for each age group, along with the total population for those age groups. Higher numbers at the bottom of the table suggest population growth, whereas higher numbers at the top indicate declining birth rates. Furthermore, the dataset can be utilized to understand the youth dependency ratio, old-age dependency ratio, total dependency ratio, and potential support ratio.

Key observations

• Youth dependency ratio, which is the number of children aged 0-14 per 100 persons aged 15-64, for Media, PA, is 13.1.
• Old-age dependency ratio, which is the number of persons aged 65 or over per 100 persons aged 15-64, for Media, PA, is 31.5.
• Total dependency ratio for Media, PA is 44.6.
• Potential support ratio, which is the number of youth (working age population) per elderly, for Media, PA is 3.2.

Content

When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates.

Age groups:

• Under 5 years
• 5 to 9 years
• 10 to 14 years
• 15 to 19 years
• 20 to 24 years
• 25 to 29 years
• 30 to 34 years
• 35 to 39 years
• 40 to 44 years
• 45 to 49 years
• 50 to 54 years
• 55 to 59 years
• 60 to 64 years
• 65 to 69 years
• 70 to 74 years
• 75 to 79 years
• 80 to 84 years
• 85 years and over

Variables / Data Columns

• Age Group: This column displays the age group for the Media population analysis. Total expected values are 18 and are define above in the age groups section.
• Population (Male): The male population in the Media for the selected age group is shown in the following column.
• Population (Female): The female population in the Media for the selected age group is shown in the following column.
• Total Population: The total population of the Media for the selected age group is shown in the following column.

Good to know

Margin of Error

Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.

Custom data

If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.

Inspiration

Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.

Recommended for further research

This dataset is a part of the main dataset for Media Population by Age. You can refer the same here

During a January 2024 global survey among marketers, nearly 60 percent reported plans to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes in the following 12 months. LinkedIn and Instagram followed, respectively mentioned by 57 and 56 percent of the respondents intending to use them more. According to the same survey, Facebook was the most important social media platform for marketers worldwide.

Problematic Internet use (PIU) in adolescents is a global public health issue especially exacerbated by the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. The authors assume a negative impact of PIU not only in relation to adolescents’ mental health and social behaviour but also relative to somatic components of their health, particularly concerning the occurrence of pain symptoms – recurrent headache (RH), recurrent abdominal pain (RAP), and recurrent back pain (RBP). The present study aims to identify the associations between different types of PIU (generalized PIU – PIUgen, problematic computer game use – PUgame, and problematic social media use – PUsocial), and pain symptoms (RH, RAP and RBP), and to determine the role of psychosocial factors in the emergence of these associations. Methods: The research represents a one-stage observational study of 4,411 adolescents (53.6% girls; Mage = 14.53±1.52) in an unbiased school sample, held in three large cities of Central Siberia. The frequ..., Participants The study is a one-stage observational survey of an unbiased school sample in three large cities in Central Siberia. The research object is represented by 12-18-year-old adolescents (n = 4,411) – students of 10 comprehensive schools in Krasnoyarsk, Russia (n = 2,843), 4 comprehensive schools in Abakan, Russia (n = 1,357) and 2 comprehensive schools in Kyzyl, Russia (n = 211). Measurement After obtaining informed consent from the parents and confirming the voluntariness of participation with the students, the researchers assured the latter of the confidentiality of the study. The students were asked to complete paper versions of self-report questionnaires within 45 minutes in a classroom setting. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2019. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Federal Research Centre “Krasnoyarsk Science Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences†. Recurrent pain symptoms measurement Adolescents were asked a number o..., , # Recurrent pain symptoms in adolescents with generalized and specific problematic Internet use: Associations analysis, confounding and mediating effects of comorbid psychosocial problems

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv4z

This dataset contains primary data from a survey of 4411 adolescents. The dataset contains demographic data, test data from the following questionnaires:

 - The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

- The Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS)

- The Game Addiction Scale for Adolescents (GASA)

- The Social Media Disorder Scale (SMDS)

In addition, the dataset contains coded responses from adolescents regarding the frequency and intensity of recurrent pain symptoms: headache, abdominal pain, and back pain.

Description of the data

Code: the unique code of the adolescent

Age_group:Â 1 - <= 14 years; 2 > 14 years

Sex: 1 - male; 2 - female

Ethnicity: Russians - 1; Tuvans - 2; Khakass - 3; Others - ...

IntroductionSince the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public safety measures, including social distancing and school closures, have been implemented, precipitating psychological difficulties and heightened online activities for adolescents. However, studies examining the impact of the pandemic on adolescent mental health and their coping strategies in Asian countries are limited. Further, most studies have used survey measures to capture mental health challenges so far. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the psychological challenges South Korean adolescents experienced and their coping strategies during the pandemic using the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Text mining (TM) technique on adolescents’ social media texts/posts.MethodsThe data were gathered from social media texts/posts such as online communities, Twitter, and personal blogs from January 1, 2019, to October 31, 2021. The 12,520,250 texts containing keywords related to adolescents’ common psychological difficulties reported during the pandemic, including self-harm, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), and insomnia, were analyzed by TM, NLP using information extraction, co-occurrence and sentiment analysis. The monthly frequency of the keywords and their associated words was also analyzed to understand the time trend.ResultsAdolescents used the word “self-harm” in their social media texts more frequently during the second wave of COVID-19 (August to September 2020). “Friends” was the most associated word with “self-harm.” While the frequency of texts with “Insomnia” stayed constant throughout the pandemic, the word “ADHD” was increasingly mentioned in social media. ADHD and insomnia were most frequently associated with ADHD medications and sleeping pills, respectively. Friends were generally associated with positive words, while parents were associated with negative words.ConclusionDuring COVID-19, Korean adolescents often expressed their psychological challenges on social media platforms. However, their coping strategies seemed less efficient to help with their difficulties, warranting strategies to support them in the prolonged pandemic era. For example, Korean adolescents shared psychological challenges such as self-harm with friends rather than their parents. They considered using medicine (e.g., sleeping pills and ADHD medication) as coping strategies for sleep and attention problems.

Social media companies are starting to offer users the option to subscribe to their platforms in exchange for monthly fees. Until recently, social media has been predominantly free to use, with tech companies relying on advertising as their main revenue generator. However, advertising revenues have been dropping following the COVID-induced boom. As of July 2023, Meta Verified is the most costly of the subscription services, setting users back almost 15 U.S. dollars per month on iOS or Android. Twitter Blue costs between eight and 11 U.S. dollars per month and ensures users will receive the blue check mark, and have the ability to edit tweets and have NFT profile pictures. Snapchat+, drawing in four million users as of the second quarter of 2023, boasts a Story re-watch function, custom app icons, and a Snapchat+ badge.

Adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) face psychosocial challenges that could affect HIV treatment outcomes. Peer support networks and aspects of well-being, including self-efficacy, self-esteem, and social capital, could ameliorate these challenges. This retrospective analysis describes participation in existing facility-based adolescent clubs and the associations between club attendance, adolescent well-being, and HIV treatment outcomes. Data were collected through interviews with a sub-sample of adolescents aged 10-19 years and medical record abstraction of all adolescents attending HIV services at seven clinics in Tanzania. Independent variables included adolescent club attendance, self-efficacy, self-esteem, symptoms of depression/anxiety, social capital, and other health utilization or HIV experience characteristics. Study outcomes included visit adherence, viral suppression (<1000 cp/ml), and retention. Of 645 adolescents, 75% attended clubs at least once, with a median of eight..., Data were collected through interviews with a sub-sample of adolescents aged 10-19 years and medical record abstraction of all adolescents attending HIV services at seven clinics in Tanzania. Data were analyzed using STATA 16.1., , # Adolescent clubs and self-efficacy linked to better HIV outcomes

Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.cnp5hqc5n

Description of the data and file structure

We conducted a retrospective analysis of adolescents living with HIV attending seven health facilities with well-established adolescent clubs as part of their HIV clinical services. Data sources included (1) abstracted data on HIV/ART clinical visits from 2015 to 2019, (2) abstracted data on club attendance records from 2016 to 2018, and (3) data collected from structured interviews with a subset of attending adolescents in 2018.

Participant and siteid IDs are unlinkable to any personal identifiers. Neither ID alone nor in combination with other variables in the dataset can be used to identify any individual or geographic location within the study country, Tanzania. Two age variables, while treated as continuous in the analyses, were binned to declassify them as "indirect identifiers." The remaining indirect ..., Among those recruited for an interview, caregivers of minors and adolescents who were either emancipated or age 18 years or older provided written informed consent. Adolescent minors (age 10–17) provided verbal assent. For adolescents whose medical record information was included in the analysis but who were not recruited for interview, a waiver of informed consent was granted under a separate protocol approved by the National Research Ethics Committee of the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania and the US-based IRB, Advarra. All data were fully anonymized using participant and site ID numbers unlinked to any personal identifiers.

Overview

Objectives of Global Youth Tobacco Survey:

To determine the level of tobacco use by State/UTs, sex, location of school (urban/rural). To estimate the age of initiation of cigarette and bidi smoking and smokeless tobacco. To estimate the exposure to secondhand smoking (SHS). To estimate the exposure to tobacco advertising

Available Columns in the dataset

1. Use of any form of tobacco, i.e. smoking, smokeless, and any other form of tobacco products;
2. Ever tried or experimented any form of tobacco even once;
3. Use of any form of tobacco in past 30 days;
4. Includes other form of smoking products in addition to cigarette and bidi such as hookah, cigars, cheroots, cigarillos, water pipe, chillum, chutta, dhumti,
5. Use of paan masala together with tobacco was asked directly as one of the categories of smokeless tobacco;
6. Susceptibility to future cigarette use includes those who answered Yes, or maybe to using tobacco products if one of their best friends offered it to them;
7. E-cigarette is part of Electronic Nicotine Delivery System (ENDS) and includes like devices and other emerging products;
8. Stopped using tobacco in past 12 months;
9. Refers to current tobacco users only;
10. Secondhand smoking or passive smoking refers to exposure to other peoples smoking in past 7 days;
11. Refers to schools, hostels, shops, restaurants, movie theatres, public conveyances, gyms, sports arenas, airports, auditorium, hospital building, railway waiting room, public toilets, public offices, educational institutions, libraries, etc.; 12. Refers to playgrounds, sidewalks, entrances to buildings, parks, beaches, bus stops, market places, etc.; #. the value 0.0 represent prevalence of less than 0.05.
12. Refers to source of obtaining tobacco products by current users at the time of last use in past 30 days and the two major sources are given here, therefore, these two figures may not add upto 100% as there are other sources;
13. Includes any form of mass media, fairs, concerts, sporting, community events or social gatherings, tobacco products packages and taught in class;
14. Mass media includes television, radio, internet, billboards, posters, newspapers, magazines, movies, etc.;
15. Social events include sports events, fairs, concerts, community events, social gatherings etc.;
16. Includes any form of media or point of sale;
17. Point of Sale includes any stores, grocery shops, paan shops etc.; 19.Unit of analysis is the school (unweighted);
18. Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003.

License: Brief of Open Government Data (OGD) License- India

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, adolescents' mental health was largely undermined. A general increment in screen time was reported. However, the long-term effects of the latter on adolescents' mental health are still little explored.MethodsIn the present natural experiment, we investigated these effects using longitudinal data collected before and after the first lockdown in Switzerland. Data come from 674 Swiss adolescents (56.7% females, Mage = 14.45, SDage = 0.50) during Spring 2019 (T1) and Autumn 2020 (T2) as part of the longitudinal MEDIATICINO study. Self-reported mental health measures included somatic symptoms, inattention, anxiety, irritability, anger, sleep problems, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, loneliness, and depression. Measures for screen-media activities included time spent on the Internet, smartphones, social media, video gaming, instant messaging, and television viewing. They were all assessed at T1 and T2.ResultsPaired-sample t-tests with Bonferroni's correction showed that most mental health problems increased over time with an overall medium effect size (Hedge's g = 0.337). In particular, medium effect sizes were found for anxiety, depression, and inattention; small-to-medium effect sizes were reported for loneliness, sleep problems, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms; and a small effect size was found for somatic symptoms. Screen-media activities increased, with the exception of television viewing and video gaming. The results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that, controlling for covariates, increased time spent on social media – calculated as the difference between T2 and T1 – was the only screen-media activity significantly associated with worse mental health at T2 (β = 0.112, p = 0.016). More time spent in structured media activities like television viewing diminished levels of inattention (β = −0.091, p = 0.021) and anxiety (β = −0.093, p = 0.014). Among covariates, being female, experiencing two or more life events, having mental health problems at T1, and using screens for homeschooling negatively influenced mental health at T2.ConclusionThese results align with literature indicating a small but negative effect of social media time on mental health. Underlying mechanisms are manifold, including increased exposure to COVID-19 news, heightened fear of missing out, social comparison, and time-displaced for activities such as physical activity and green time. However, in line with the structured days hypothesis, getting involved in media-structured activities like television viewing might protect against mental health symptoms.

Public opinion poll on: Animals; Asia; Business; China; Communications Technology; Congress; Consumer; Economics; Elections; Energy; Environment; Europe; Family; Finances; Foreign Policy; Future; Government; Groups and Organizations; Health; Ideology; India; Information; Japan; Latin America; Local; Media; Mood; Notable People; Nuclear; Participation; Political Partisanship; Presidency; Regulation; Religion; Science; Social Media; Spending; States; Taxing; Technology; Television; Transportation.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that often persists into adulthood. One hallmark in the characterization of pathological processing in ADHD is that attention skills are not impaired per se but more inconsistent and with higher variability compared to typically developing children (TDC). Increased variability in ADHD patients has been found in reaction times, as well as resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) brain signals. High variability has been assumed to reflect occasional lapses in attention, linked to intrusions of distracting activity during task performance and/or reduced anti-correlation between regions in the DMN and attention networks. Therefore, Dajani et al. (2019) concluded that it is more likely the dynamics between and within neural networks [i.e., the variability of network processing across time- and frequency-scales], that are affected in ADHD, than functional connectivity [in terms of one coefficient describing the (averaged) correlation between two regions over time]. We determined wavelet variance to quantify these dynamics. We determined wVar at rest and under task in fMRI timeseries of regions of the DMN and the FPN in three different frequency bands: 0.02 to 0.04Hz, 0.04 to 0.08Hz, and 0.08-0.16Hz. We found that wVar differed group specifically between rest and task (significant group X condition interaction: whereas wVar was higher at rest compared to task in TDC, wVar was comparable or even decreased at rest in ADHD. For an external validation of group comparisons in wVar at rest, we determined wVar in rs-fMRI timeseries of a subsample of the Child Mind Institute data set (Functional Connectomes Project International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative http://dx.doi.org/10.15387/CMI_HBN (2017)). Results replicated our findings in terms of no significant group differences in wVar at rest in combination with similar or lower absolute values in ADHD patients compared to control subjects. In normal processing, high wVar at rest was interpreted as reflecting free fluctuating brain signaling, in comparison to small wVar under task indicating focussed processing. Thus, we conclude that wVar is a sensitive measure of cognitive processing and is even capable of detecting deviant processing in pathological brain function. Methods MRI data acquisition: Scanning was performed on a 3 Tesla TIM Trio Scanner at the Institute for Diagnostical and Interventional Neuroradiology at the University Hospital Wuerzburg and on a 3 Tesla PRISMA Scanner (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) at the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University Hospital Duesseldorf. Whole-brain T2*-weighted BOLD images were recorded with a simultaneous multi-slice echo-planar imaging sequence (repetition time=800ms, echo time=37ms, 72 slices, 2mm thickness, flip angle=52°, rs-fMRI: 6:58min, 512volumes, task-fMRI: 14.5min, 1069 volumes). We determined wavelet variance (wVar) at rest and under task in fMRI timeseries of the DMN and the FPN in three different frequency bands: 0.02 to 0.04Hz, 0.04 to 0.08Hz, and 0.08-0.16Hz in children and adolescents with and without ADHD. WVar was determined from fMRI timeseries in regions defined from CONN’s ICA analyses of the HCP dataset (497 subjects) including the default mode network (DMN) and the fronto-parietal attention network (FPN) using wavelet transform from a signal filtering perspective, and the definition of wVar quantity as introduced by Percival (1995).Additionally, for an external validation, wVar in rs-fMRI timeseries of a subsample of the Child Mind Institute data set (Functional Connectomes Project International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative http://dx.doi.org/10.15387/CMI_HBN (2017)) was determined.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, approximately 83 percent selected increased exposure as a benefit of social media marketing. Increased traffic followed, mentioned by 73 percent of the respondents, while 65 percent cited generated leads.

              The multibillion-dollar social media ad industry

              Between 2019 – the last year before the pandemic – and 2024, global social media advertising spending skyrocketed by 140 percent, surpassing an estimated 230 billion U.S. dollars in the latter year. That figure was forecast to increase by nearly 50 percent by the end of the decade, exceeding 345 billion dollars in 2029. As of 2024, the social media networks with the most monthly active users were Facebook, with over three billion, and YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion.

              Pros and cons of GenAI for social media marketing

              According to another 2024 survey, generative artificial intelligence's (GenAI) leading benefits for social media marketing according to professionals worldwide included increased efficiency and easier idea generation. The third place was a tie between increased content production and enhanced creativity. All those advantages were cited by between 33 and 38 percent of the interviewees. As for GenAI's top challenges for global social media marketing,
              maintaining authenticity and the value of human creativity ranked first, mentioned by 43 and 40 percent of the respondents, respectively. Another 35 percent deemed ensuring the content resonates as an obstacle.

A global survey conducted in the third quarter of 2024 found that the main reason for using social media was to keep in touch with friends and family, with over 50.8 percent of social media users saying this was their main reason for using online networks. Overall, 39 percent of social media users said that filling spare time was their main reason for using social media platforms, whilst 34.5 percent of respondents said they used it to read news stories. Less than one in five users were on social platforms for the reason of following celebrities and influencers.

              The most popular social network

              Facebook dominates the social media landscape. The world's most popular social media platform turned 20 in February 2024, and it continues to lead the way in terms of user numbers. As of February 2025, the social network had over three billion global users. YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp follow, but none of these well-known brands can surpass Facebook’s audience size.
              Moreover, as of the final quarter of 2023, there were almost four billion Meta product users.

              Ever-evolving social media usage

              The utilization of social media remains largely gratuitous; however, companies have been encouraging users to become paid subscribers to reduce dependence on advertising profits. Meta Verified entices users by offering a blue verification badge and proactive account protection, among other things. X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, and Reddit also offer users the chance to upgrade their social media accounts for a monthly free.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, TikTok generated around 186 million downloads from users worldwide. Initially launched in China first by ByteDance as Douyin, the short-video format was popularized by TikTok and took over the global social media environment in 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok downloads peaked at over 313.5 million worldwide, up by 62.3 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019.

              TikTok interactions: is there a magic formula for content success?

              In 2024, TikTok registered an engagement rate of approximately 4.64 percent on video content hosted on its platform. During the same examined year, the social video app recorded over 1,100 interactions on average. These interactions were primarily composed of likes, while only recording less than 20 comments per piece of content on average in 2024.
              The platform has been actively monitoring the issue of fake interactions, as it removed around 236 million fake likes during the first quarter of 2024. Though there is no secret formula to get the maximum of these metrics, recommended video length can possibly contribute to the success of content on TikTok.
              It was recommended that tiny TikTok accounts with up to 500 followers post videos that are around 2.6 minutes long as of the first quarter of 2024. While, the ideal video duration for huge TikTok accounts with over 50,000 followers was 7.28 minutes. The average length of TikTok videos posted by the creators in 2024 was around 43 seconds.

              What’s trending on TikTok Shop?

              Since its launch in September 2023, TikTok Shop has become one of the most popular online shopping platforms, offering consumers a wide variety of products. In 2023, TikTok shops featuring beauty and personal care items sold over 370 million products worldwide.
              TikTok shops featuring womenswear and underwear, as well as food and beverages, followed with 285 and 138 million products sold, respectively. Similarly, in the United States market, health and beauty products were the most-selling items,
              accounting for 85 percent of sales made via the TikTok Shop feature during the first month of its launch. In 2023, Indonesia was the market with the largest number of TikTok Shops, hosting over 20 percent of all TikTok Shops. Thailand and Vietnam followed with 18.29 and 17.54 percent of the total shops listed on the famous short video platform, respectively.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, around 86 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 79 and 65 percent of the respondents.

              The global social media marketing segment

              According to the same study, 59 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2024. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide.

              Social media for B2B marketing

              Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram – both run by Meta, Inc. – due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.