There were 243 672 000 Instagram users in India in January 2023, which accounted for 16.6% of its entire population. The majority of them were men - 73%. People aged 18 to 24 were the largest user group (97 400 000). The highest difference between men and women occurs within people aged 18 to 24, where men lead by 71 700 000.

Instagram was one of the leading social networks in India with a far higher male user share compared to female users in January 2024. Out of the total users, the social networking site reported to have around 67.2 percent of advertisement reach among male users and 32.8 percent among female users.

As of January 2024, India had a total of 362 million Instagram users, the largest Instagram audience in the world. The United States had 169 million users, and Brazil had 134 million. Indonesia, Turkey, and Japan ranked in fourth, fifth and sixth position, respectively. Brunei is the leading country for Instagram audience reach, with 92 percent of the population using the social media service. Guam came in second, with a penetration rate of 79.2 percent and the Cayman Islands ranked third, with 78.8 percent, followed closely by Kazakhstan, Iceland and Montenegro. It took Instagram 11.2 years to reach the milestone of 2 billion monthly active users worldwide. WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, took 11 years, whilst Facebook took 13.3 years and YouTube took just over 14 years. Instagram’s demographics in the United States As of May 2021, Instagram was the fourth most visited social media service in the United States, after Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Out of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok was the most used of all three platforms by Generation Z. Overall, 57 percent of Gen Z social media users used Instagram, down from 61 percent in 2020 and 64 percent in 2019. Instagram finds most popularity with those in the 25 to 34 year age group, and as of December 2021, roughly a third of all users in the United States belonged to this age group. The social media app was also more likely to be used by women. Most followed accounts on Instagram Instagram’s official account had the most followers as of February 2022 with over 470 million followers. Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) had over 401 million followers on the platform and media personality and makeup mogul Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) had over 309 million followers. National Geographic (@natgeo) had over 206.9 million followers, sharing educational content through its renowned photojournalism.

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.

The popular photo-sharing social networking app, Instagram, had the second highest share in India's mobile social media market with around 36 percent as of March 2025. Its sister platform, Facebook, had the highest share in the Indian mobile market that year.

According to a survey conducted on social media usage across India in October and November 2020, tier1 cities responded with the highest share of active users on Instagram. The average across tier 1, 2, and 3 cities was 72 percent during the survey period. According to the source, active referred to respondents who spent at least half an hour daily on the Facebook-owned app.

The share of Instagram in India's overall social media market stood at nearly 35 percent in December 2024. This was an increase compared to the same period in the previous year, reflecting the growing trend that was noted throughout 2024. Instagram has increasingly gained popularity among Indian social media users over the years, making it the second leading platform in the market after Facebook.

This statistic represents the share of Instagram users across India as of August 2017, by age. During the measured time period, the share of 18-24 years old Instagram users was the highest with 51 percent across the country.

As of January 2025, 28.3 percent of Instagram users in the United States were aged between 25 and 34 years, making up the platform’s largest audience in the country. Overall, the group with the second-highest usage was those aged 18 to 24 years, with 26.5 percent of users, followed by 19.4 percent that were aged 35 to 44 years. The age group that used Instagram the least was those older than 65 years, making up 5.8 percent of users, respectively. Popular social media platforms in the United States Instagram was the third most visited social media platform in the United States as of March 2024 across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices combined, accounting for 14.13 percent of all social media visits in the country. Despite Instagram’s popularity, Facebook remained the leading social media platform by far in the U.S., accounting for almost 50 percent of all social media visits. Pinterest and X (formerly Twitter) ranked second and fourth in terms of visits, with 21.2 percent and 10.91 percent of visits, respectively. Instagram’s global audience Instagram’s global popularity continues to surge, with no signs of slowing down. As of January 2024, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 362.9 million users, while the United States had the second-highest market with 169.65 million users, followed by Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey, respectively. As of April 2024, Instagram was the third most popular social network globally, reaching two billion monthly active users.

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 June 2023, millennials and Gen Z constituted a majority of the audience of influencers on Instagram across India. Almost 38 percent of this audience were aged between 26 and 32 years, the second largest group being that of 19 to 25 year olds.

Most influencers on Instagram across India fell under the nano influencer tier, grossing over one million in number. In comparison, there were up to 30,000 content creators that were grouped under the mega influencer or celebrity category. While more easily discoverable than the other tiers, this tier of influencers had a low engagement rate.

The number of Instagram users in India was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 46.1 million users (+13.89 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Instagram user base is estimated to reach 377.99 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Instagram users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here with regards to the platform instagram, 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).Find more key insights for the number of Instagram users in countries like Pakistan and Nepal.

How many people use Instagram?

Instagram is a social media app which focuses on photo and video sharing. It is owned by Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta, in a move towards the metaverse. As of December 2021, Instagram reached a new milestone of 2 billion active users worldwide. The platform previously reached 1 billion users in June 2018.

Users aged 25 to 34 years made up the biggest Instagram user group by age worldwide, followed by 18 to 24 year olds. Overall, men accounted for 51.6 percent of global Instagram users.

Most popular Instagram accounts and content

Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was the most followed person on Instagram as of 2021, with approximately 315 million followers. Ranked in second and third position were the Rock and Ariana Grande, both having over 250 million followers each.

It’s not only athletes and actors who drive the views on Instagram though. Instagram has long since become a medium for people and communities to spread their messages, and in the past two years, social activists and educators have used Instagram for their movements. Political and educational accounts generate high engagement rates with their content. Posts from political accounts receive an average engagement rate of 2.74 percent and educational posts receive an average of 2.56 percent.

Social media usage worldwide

There are 3.4 billion social media users worldwide and this is expected to increase to 4.41 billion by 2025. Instagram is most popular in India with a total of 201.1 million users, followed by the U.S. with 157.1 million and Brazil with 114.9 million active users. Instagram is the fourth most popular social media site in the world, after Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, respectively.

As of October 2021, Brunei was the country with the highest Instagram audience reach with 92 percent of the population using the platform. This was followed by Guam with 79.2 percent and the Cayman Islands with 78.8 percent audience reach.

As of October 2021, Facebook had almost 3 billion users worldwide. The penetration rate for Facebook in the United States in 2021 was 70.59 percent and it is expected to reach 76.87 percent by 2026.

Between January and June 2023, Isha Jodawat was the leading beauty influencer on Instagram in India, with an engagement rate of more than 66 percent. Over the surveyed period, the beauty category garnered immense popularity among Indian content creators and users on Instagram with over a million posts being created and circulated.

The global number of Instagram users in was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 361.1 million users (+25.68 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Instagram user base is estimated to reach 1.8 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Instagram users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here with regards to the platform instagram, 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).Find more key insights for the number of Instagram users in countries like Caribbean and South America.

Growing digitalization efforts combined with low data prices enabled a significant number of people to use the internet actively across India. Of these, about 462 million were active social media users. WhatsApp and Instagram accounted for the largest penetration, at 83 percent and over 80 percent respectively in the third quarter of 2023. The rise of Facebook in India   Hyderabad became the first Asian Facebook office registered under “Facebook India Online Services Private Limited” in 2010. The steady growth of the social network did not come without controversies. One of the most opposed collaborations that Facebook founded was internet.org, especially in India. The partnership with Reliance communications in 2015 caused controversy and was banned later that year. In recent years, the rise of fake news and its impact on politics has brought responsibility and content moderation to the forefront.   YouTube – the video-sharing social platform counterpart   YouTube was largely inspired by two events according to one of its founders – one of which was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The idea was the make sharing and finding videos easily available. YouTube consumption in India sky-rocketed with the Indian Premier League match streaming in 2010 with over two billion views per day. Of course, this doubled with each season of the IPL thereafter. Furthermore, music videos were highly popular in the country. The evidence lies in the subscription growth of the music record label T-Series’ YouTube channel.

According to a study on influencer marketing across India in 2024, Instagram was the leading platform for collaboration between influencers and brands in the country, as per 90 percent of respondents. YouTube was the second-most popular choice. The increasing popularity of short form video content among Indian audiences resulted in both brands and content creators relying heavily on these platforms for marketing.

According to hypeauditor.com, a majority of the Instagram influencers across India were between the age of 18 to 34 years as of January 2020. Over 67 percent of women influencers were aged between 18 and 24 years in the country.

Facebook had the largest market share among social media platforms across India at roughly 64 percent as of October 2024. The Meta-owned social network site has consistently led the country's social media market since 2019. Instagram was the second leading social media platform during that period with a market share of over 25 percent, reflecting a fluctuating trend that emerged in the previous year. 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 116 billion U.S. dollars. The company has further set its sights on bringing the metaverse to life to enhance the online experience of over three billion Facebook users across the world.