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.

Use our Instagram dataset (public data) to extract business and non-business information from complete public profiles and filter by hashtags, followers, account type, or engagement score. Depending on your needs, you may purchase the entire dataset or a customized subset. Popular use cases include sentiment analysis, brand monitoring, influencer marketing, and more. The dataset includes all major data points: # of followers, verified status, account type (business / non-business), links, posts, comments, location, engagement score, hashtags, and much more.

From 2023 to 2024, Tiny accounts on Instagram, accounts with under 500 followers, saw the biggest increase in engagement. Overall, these accounts saw year-on-year increases in engagement of around 21 percent. Small accounts, with between 500 and 2,000 followers, saw a decrease in interactions of -0.38 percent.

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.

In 2024, the average Instagram post from an account with under 500 followers reached around 6,500 Instagram users, up from 1,405 in 2023. Huge accounts, with over 50,001 followers reach an average of 49,932 thousand users in 2024, down from 56,191 users in 2023.

59% of adults in the united states are using Instagram daily.

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.

There are over 1.5 billion registered users on Instagram in 2024.

The most significant cohorts of users on Instagram are aged 25 – 34.

During the first quarter of 2024, Huge Instagram accounts, which had over 50,000 followers, reported to post approximately short-form videos, or Reel, every two days, and almost 0.50 Reels per day. In comparison, Big accounts, which counted between 10,001 and 50,000 followers, posted 0.3 Reels daily on average. Tiny accounts, which had a following of less than 500 users, posted their Reels on Instagram approximately every five days, or 0.18 Reels per day.

In 2024, Instagram accounts with more than 50,000 followers posted an average of 8.66 Reels per week, up from 3.98 per week in 2023. In addition, Big accounts, which are accounts with between 10,000 and 50,000 followers, increased their posting frequency of Reels from 1.71 times weekly in 2023, to 3.93 in 2024.

56.5% of Facebook users worldwide are male. This is in direct contrast to only 43.5% of Facebook being female.

There were 375 641 900 Instagram users in India in February 2024, which accounted for 25.7% of its entire population. The majority of them were men - 66.5%. People aged 18 to 24 were the largest user group (166 600 000). The highest difference between men and women occurs within people aged 25 to 34, where men lead by 94 400 000.

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.

The average Twitter user spends 5.1 hours per month on the platform.

There are over 875 million registered users on LinkedIn in 2024.

TikTok comes in 6th position in a list of the world’s most-used social media sites today.

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.

The average Snapchat user spends just 3 hours per month on the app.

In 2024, Instagram accounts with more than 50,000 followers posted an average of 9.3 time per week, up from 6.5 times per week in 2023. In addition, Big accounts, which are accounts with between 10,000 and 50,000 followers, increased their posting frequency up from 3.1 times weekly in 2023, to 5.1 in 2024.