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.

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.

As of January 2021, users in their 20s accounted for 27.4 percent of Instagram's monthly active user accounts in the United States. According to App Ape, users aged 30 to 39 years were the second-largest user group, accounting for 23.1 percent of the photo sharing app's user base on the Android platform.

As of October 2020, the number of monthly active users (MAU) of Instagram in South Korea amounted to about *** million. This number includes users on Android and iOS.

As of February 2025, India had a total of 413.85 million Instagram users, the largest Instagram audience in the world. The United States had 171.7 million users, and Brazil had 140.7 million. Indonesia, Turkey, and Japan ranked in fourth, fifth and sixth position, respectively. Kazakhstan is the leading country for Instagram audience reach, with 86.2 percent of the population using the social media service. Turkey came in second, with a penetration rate of 85.5 percent and Uruguay ranked third, with 87.1 percent, followed closely by the UAE, Brazil, and Bahrain. 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 March 2025, Instagram was the fourth most visited social media service in the United States, after Facebook, Pinterest and X. 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 in 2021, 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 January 2025, roughly 28.3 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 April 2024 with over 672 million followers. Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) had over 628 million followers on the platform, while the Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had over 502 million followers. The Instagram accounts of the American singer and actress Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) and the media personality and makeup mogul Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) had over 400 million followers each.

How many active users are on Instagram? In 2023, the photo sharing site is projected to reach ***** million monthly active users in the United States, up from ***** million users in 2020. Social network reach The internet has brought about many changes in how people around the world communicate, especially through one of its most powerful inventions: social media. According to a recent study, internet users worldwide spend an average of over *********** per day on one of the many social media platforms. Such websites and apps are increasingly used not just for social sharing, but also as means to building reputation, finding career opportunities or monetary income. As of January 2021, an estimated ** percent of the world’s population was using social networking, with West and Northern Europe having the highest penetration rate – ** percent of the respective region's populations. Eastern Asia placed first in a global ranking of mobile social media penetration according to geographical region. Industry leaders Facebook is by far the most popular social network with over *** billion global monthly active users but Instagram, the mobile photo and video-sharing application launched in 2010, is quickly growing in popularity. Instagram was bought by Facebook back in 2012. As of June 2018, there are an estimated *********** Instagram monthly active users worldwide. There are an estimated *********** Instagram users in the United States alone, a number which is forecast to grow to over *** million in 2023. According to the company, the secret to their success is their unique visual storytelling approach to social media. Users registered with the platform can upload pictures and videos, to which they can also apply filters, frames and other effects. They can also attach captions, tags of other people/accounts, whether friends, celebrities or companies and hashtags, which make the media easy to find if one is looking for specific subjects. There are a reported ** million photos uploaded to Instagram every day.

TikTok saw an exceptional increase of monthly active users worldwide from 2019 to 2021, at 38 percent. The short-form video sharing app was used by 689 million individuals monthly as of 2021, compared to 500 million in 2019. Other leading social networks that increased with over 30 percent were Pinterest and Reddit.

The coronavirus pandemic is one of the factors that have resulted in an increased interest in social networking, with billions of people in lockdown, working and studying from home, and in need of socializing.

Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with more than one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the third quarter of 2023, Facebook reported around four billion monthly core Family product users. The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms Most top ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ or video sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin’s popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network: a little app called TikTok. How many people use social media? The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2025, social networking sites are estimated to reach 5.42 billion users and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide. The platform surpassed two billion active users in the second quarter of 2017, taking just over 13 years to reach this milestone. In comparison, Meta-owned Instagram took 11.2 years, and Google’s YouTube took just over 14 years to achieve this landmark. As of January 2022, Facebook’s leading audience base was in India, with almost 330 million users whilst the United States ranked second with an approximate total of 179 million users. The platform also finds remarkable popularity in Indonesia and Brazil. Social Media usage in the United States In January 2021, Facebook was the platform on which users in the United States spent the most time per day. The average time spent on Facebook was 33 minutes, followed by TikTok with 32 minutes and Twitter with 31 daily minutes. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all major social media platforms saw an increase in daily usage, which then either plateaued or decreased in 2021. At the end of 2021, over a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group and 18.2 percent of users were in the 35 to 44 year age group. In general, Facebook users were more likely to be female. Meta Platforms Meta is Facebook’s recently renamed parent company and had a grand total of 3.59 billion core product users by the final quarter of 2021. Other Meta products include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus – Meta’s virtual reality subsidiary which produces VR headsets. In 2021, Meta's revenue amounted to 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous financial year.

As of October 2022, TikTok was estimated to have *** billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. The popular short-video social platform was projected to reach *** billion MAU by the end of 2026. In comparison, social and photo platform Instagram was projected to reach *** billion MAU by the end of 2026.

As of April 2025, Instagram was slightly more popular with men than women, with men accounting for 52.5 percent of the platform’s global users. Additionally, the social media app was most popular amongst younger audiences, with almost 31.6 percent of users aged between 25 and 34 years. Instagram’s Global Audience As of February 2025, Instagram was the third 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 February 2025, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 413.85 million users, followed by the United States with 171.7 million users. Who is winning over the generations? Even though Instagram’s audience is considerably larger than 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 2024, generating 825.48 million downloads. As of 2022, Generation Z in the United States spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram monthly.

As of July 2025, the Dominican Republic was the Caribbean territory with the largest Instagram audience, counting over *** million monthly active users (MAU). In second place was Puerto Rico, with approximately **** million users. When looking at Latin America as a whole, Brazil was the country with the highest number of users of the photo and video sharing social media platform.

In 2023, Instagram was projected to generate an estimated 23 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in the United States. The photo sharing app’s revenue is set increase to 29 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Instagram as Facebook revenue driver Initially released in 2010 and quickly acquired by Facebook in 2012 for one billion U.S. dollars, Instagram has been in the public eye since its early days. Instagram’s monthly active users grew from a mere 90 million in January 2013 to over two billion MAU in December 2021 and the platform not showing any signs of slowing down. Apart from ongoing user growth, Instagram is also one of the most popular social media platforms used by marketers worldwide, second only to Facebook. Despite the rapid growth of Instagram under Facebook’s ownership and cross-platform promotion, not everything has been smooth sailing under the blue flag. In September 2018, founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced their resignation amidst reports of culture and product clashes between Instagram and its parent company. Facebook was quick to appoint a new CEO, and under former Facebook News Feed product manager Adam Mosseri the social network has been trying to make the most of Instagram’s ad potential. In late June 2019, Instagram launched ads in its Explore section. The platform already allowed ads in the regular feed and Stories.

Russia had nearly ********** Instagram users in January 2025. The user count steadily increased until January 2022 when it reached over **********. In mid-March 2022, the social media platform was blocked in the country, as its parent company Meta was claimed an extremist organization.

As of January 2025, ** percent of social media users in the United States aged 40 to 49 years were users of Facebook, as were ** percent of ** to ** year olds in the country. Overall, ** percent of those aged 18 to 29 years were using Instagram in the U.S. The social media market in the United States The number of social media users in the United States has shown continuous growth in the past years, and it is forecast to continue increasing to reach *** million users in 2029. As of 2023, the social network user penetration in the United States amounted to an impressive ***** percent, meaning that more than nine in ten people in the country engaged with online platforms. Furthermore, Facebook was by far the most popular social media platform in the United States, accounting for ** percent of all social media visits in 2023, followed by Pinterest with **** percent of visits. The global social media landscape As of April 2024, **** billion people were social media users, accounting for **** percent of the world’s population. Northern Europe was the region with the highest social media penetration rate with a reach of **** percent, followed by Western Europe with **** percent and Eastern Asia **** percent. In contrast, less than one in ten people in Middle Africa used social networks. Facebook’s popularity is not limited to the United States: this network leads the market on a global scale, and it accumulated more than three billion monthly active users (MAU) as of 2024, which is far more any other social media platform. YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp followed, all with *** billion or more MAU.

As of March 2021, male users in their *** accounted for **** percent of Snapchat's active user accounts in the United States. According to App Ape, women aged 20 to 29 years were the largest user group, accounting for 15.5 percent of the photo sharing app's user base on the Android platform. Snapchat stories and other features Released in 2011, Snapchat is now regarded as one of the earliest examples of mobile-first social media applications. The core feature of the platform is that messages and pictures are only available for a limited time before vanishing and becoming inaccessible. The app started out as a one-on-one messaging and photo sharing app, and now also a “Stories” function where users compile snaps into chronological storylines which are accessible to friends. Competitors Other social media platforms have also been quick to launch stories functions, the most successful among them being Instagram. The company reported 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users in January 2019. In comparison, Snapchat reported only *** million daily active users worldwide in the second quarter of 2019. The corresponding figure for the latest quarter reported was *** million. Messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have also successfully integrated stories into their product, chipping away at any unique features that Snapchat had claimed for itself. Other popular features of the Snapchat app include virtual stickers and various augmented reality (AR) objects and photo filters. In 2020, there were an estimated **** million social network augmented reality (AR) users in the United States, a figure expected to surpass ** million users by 2022.

During the fourth quarter of 2023, Meta stated that 3.98 billion people were using at least one of the company's core products (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger) each month. This was a slight increase of monthly active users (MAU) when compared to the previous quarter. Daily active users (DAU) of Meta's core products also saw year-over-year increases.

Meta's family of apps continues to dominate the global social media landscape, with 3.43 billion daily active users across its core products in the first quarter of 2025. This represents a slight increase from the previous quarter and underscores the company's enduring influence in connecting people worldwide. Instagram's global reach and demographics Among Meta's portfolio, Instagram stands out with its impressive user base in key markets. India leads with 362 million users, followed by the United States with 169 million and Brazil with 134 million. Messenger and WhatsApp usage trends Meta's messaging apps continue to see robust engagement. Facebook Messenger averaged 394 million daily active users on Android devices between October 2023 and October 2024, with iOS users adding another 175 million on average. Meanwhile, WhatsApp has solidified its position as the leading communication channel for global smartphone users, reaching an estimated three billion unique active users worldwide in June 2024.

As of the first quarter of 2025, photo and video sharing app Snapchat had 460 million daily active users worldwide, up from 460 million global DAU in the fourth quarter of 2024. The app has seen steady increases in daily active users since the beginning of 2019. Snapchat is relevant for teenagers Originally launched in 2011, Snapchat has become one of the most popular social messaging and photo sharing apps worldwide; making its CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel one of the world’s richest social media entrepreneurs. With almost 800 million active users as of April 2024, Snapchat easily ranks among the most popular social networks worldwide. According to U.S. teenagers in fall 2023, Snapchat is the second most important social network of their generation, ahead of photo sharing competitor Instagram and other networks such as Twitter or Facebook. Overall, 48 percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years were reportedly using Snapchat, the highest usage reach among any age group. When it comes to user satisfaction with social media, Snapchat’s performance is fair to middling. According to recent survey data, the social app scored 72 out of 100 points on a consumer satisfaction scale, ranking ahead of Twitter and Facebook but behind Pinterest and eternal rival Instagram.

El porcentaje estimado de usuarios activos mensuales (MAU) de Instagram seguirá aumentando durante todo el periodo, aunque no de forma tan pronunciada como durante 2021, cuando se incrementó un ****%. Así las cosas, el porcentaje estimado para 2024 es de un 6,5%.