A survey conducted in January 2022 revealed that 18 to 25-year-olds constituted the largest share of social media users in India, with ** percent using six to nine social media platforms at a time. Contrariwise, nearly *********** of the respondents aged 56 and above claimed to not having used social media platforms. The source noticed that people residing in urban areas were using more social media platforms than those in rural areas.

A survey conducted in January 2022 revealed WhatsApp as the most used platform among social media and messaging apps in India, with ** percent of respondents using it many times a day. This was followed by YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. The source revealed, despite the popularity of social media and messaging apps among Indians, three-fifth of the population never used these platforms,mainly due to lack of access to technology or smartphones.

YouTube was the **** used social media app in India as of November 2024, with each user spending an average of ** hours and ** minutes per month on the online video platform. Facebook and Instagram were the ****** and ********** used apps.

A survey revealed, ** percent of the Indian respondents living in small cities used more than 10 social media platforms in India, as of January 2022. On the other hand, nearly ** percent of respondents from villages stated that they do not use social media platforms. The source noticed that people residing in urban areas were using more social media platforms compared to Indians living in rural areas.

Facebook remained the largest market share among social media platforms across India, at roughly ** percent as of August 2025. The Meta-owned social network site has consistently led the country's social media market since 2019. However, Instagram, the second leading social media platform has been increasingly gaining market share and closing the gap with its sister company. Commercial social media usage in India Apart from creating user-generated content, Indians have leveraged social media to grow their businesses. As consumption via online channels increased, social media began playing an important role in stimulating the Indian economy. Among the most popularly used social media platforms in India, Facebook was increasingly used for digital marketing. On the other hand, Instagram emerged as the country’s leading platform for influencer collaboration. Meta Platforms Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has quickly gone on to become the social media giant it is today. Having acquired leading social media platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021. The following year, Meta generated a revenue of nearly *** billion U.S. dollars. The company has further set its sights on bringing the metaverse to life to enhance the online experience of over ***** billion Facebook users across the world.

WhatsApp emerged as the most used social media app in India, with users spending an average of ** hours per month on the instant messaging platform in 2021. Facebook followed ******* with users spending just under ** hours on average on it per month. The government-imposed ban on TikTok contributed to higher engagement on Meta Platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram, among Indian users between 2020 and 2021.

According to a survey conducted on digital payments in India as of August 2020, majority of Generation Z spent their time on social media for content. About ** percent of teenagers spent time on social media apps to chat with other people.

With the ease of internet access, the number of social media users in India stood at 518 million in 2020. Furthermore, the social network users in the country were expected to be almost 1.5 billion in 2040. Facebook remained the popular choice among the social media platforms as of 2020. What was the attraction and who was attracted to it? The Indian Premier League, an annual cricket tournament conducted across major cities in the country might hold the answer. The IPL, one in many cricketing events followed religiously in India, had the highest attendance among all cricket leagues worldwide. Apart from the attendance, fans seemed to be keen on updates about their favorite teams. The IPL teams registered over 59 million likes on Facebook alone and more than 81 million followers on Twitter. Most of the Facebook usage came from the younger generation, aged between 18-24 years to be precise, with over 97 million users in 2018. How was this achieved? Increased availability of internet connections and access in recent years, propelled by the central government's Digital India initiative was directly proportional in the growth of social media users. Internet penetration had been on the rise with over 34 percent of the Indians being able to access the internet in 2017, which made the South Asian country the second largest market globally after China.

Which county has the most Facebook users?

              There are more than 378 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. To put this into context, if India’s Facebook audience were a country then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. Apart from India, there are several other markets with more than 100 million Facebook users each: The United States, Indonesia, and Brazil with 193.8 million, 119.05 million, and 112.55 million Facebook users respectively.

              Facebook – the most used social media

              Meta, the company that was previously called Facebook, owns four of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. As of the third quarter of 2021, there were around 3,5 billion cumulative monthly users of the company’s products worldwide. With around 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media worldwide. With an audience of this scale, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated through advertising.

              Facebook usage by device
              As of July 2021, it was found that 98.5 percent of active users accessed their Facebook account from mobile devices. In fact, almost 81.8 percent of Facebook audiences worldwide access the platform only via mobile phone. Facebook is not only available through mobile browser as the company has published several mobile apps for users to access their products and services. As of the third quarter 2021, the four core Meta products were leading the ranking of most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with WhatsApp amassing approximately six billion downloads.

** percent of Indian respondents answer our survey on "Most used social media platforms by type" with "Instant messengers (e.g., WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat)". The survey was conducted in 2023, among ****** consumers.Find this and more survey data on most used social media platforms by type in our Consumer Insights tool. Filter by countless demographics, drill down to your own, hand-tailored target audience, and compare results across countries worldwide.

This statistic represents the results of a survey about the usage of social media platforms by Indians in rural areas in 2018. Most respondents, about ***, used Facebook, while about *** respondents exclusively used WhatsApp during the survey period.

As a community-oriented society, it comes as no surprise that chat and social networking apps are widely popular in India. In the third quarter of 2020, about ** percent of Indians used messenger applications, while ** percent of users accessed social networking apps. On the other hand, health and fitness apps along with dating and friendship apps had the lowest user share in the country that year. Facebook’s unparalleled reach in India The two social media giants, WhatsApp and Facebook had the highest number of users in India compared to the world. At the same time, India ranked second in the world in terms of the number of Instagram users. And even though these are different social media platforms, Facebook owns both WhatsApp as well as Instagram, making it the largest stakeholder in India’s social media economy. Facebook-Reliance Jio deal In April 2020, Facebook accounted for over ** percent in India’s mobile social media market. That same month, Facebook announced an investment of over **** billion U.S. dollars for a **** percent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms - India’s biggest telecom operator. This move goes to show that India’s internet market has a tremendous potential, and the world’s biggest social media company is set on making the most of it.

As reported in a 2023 survey on first-time voters in India, Instagram was the most popular online platform used by young Indians to keep abreast of political developments, accounting for ** percent of the responses. Meanwhile, contrary to its dominance during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in India, Facebook seemed to have taken a back seat leading up to the 2024 elections.

According to a study on influencer marketing across India in 2024, YouTube was more popular among influencers than brands. In contrast, LinkedIn was more widely used by brands, as indicated by nearly ** percent of brands, signalling the platform's advent into the influencer marketing sphere. However, of the two platforms, YouTube remained the popular choice for influencer marketing.

We asked Indian consumers about "Social network usage by brand" and found that *********** takes the top spot, while ******** is at the other end of the ranking.These results are based on a representative online survey conducted in 2025 among 26,759 consumers in India.

A Rakuten Insight survey on consumer attitudes to social media advertising, revealed that a majority of Indian consumers purchased products after seeing an ad on social media, albeit at varying frequencies in 2025. Around ** percent of the respondents admitted to sometimes buying an item after seeing a social media ad, while another ** percent did so often. Social media was one of the leading digital advertising formats employed in India.

YouTube had an advertising reach of around *** million users across India as of January 2025. This was the largest audience reached via ads recorded in the country that year. Instagram and Facebook followed with approximately *** and *** million users respectively during the same period.

According to a survey, the instant messaging app, WhatsApp and social networking site, Facebook were the leading platforms for expressing political opinions across India. As of ************, ** percent of the Indian respondents had shared their political opinion many times on WhatsApp. While YouTube and Instagram were seldom used for this purpose, it was worth noting that ** percent of respondents stated never expressing political opinions on Twitter as well.

As per a survey conducted in January 2022, ** percent of the respondents used social media platforms many times a week to post selfies and videos of themselves in India. Comparatively, ** percent of the respondents never used social media platforms to post vlogs, podcasts, and audio. The source observed that the use of social media platforms was more prominent among people residing in urban areas compared to those living in rural areas.

As of July 2025, almost 33.3 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 25 and 34 years, and 29.7 percent of users were aged between 18 and 24 years. Overall, 17.4 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44-year-old 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 about 480 million and 181 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 its “vanishing photos” feature. As of the third quarter of 2025, Snapchat had 477 million daily active users.