The number of Instagram users in Singapore amounted to 3.15 million as of January 2024. In 2019, a total of over 2.2 million users were active on the social media platform Instagram.

As of June 2023, the Gen Z or those between the ages of 19 to 25 years old, made up the majority of Instagram user base in Singapore, with 35.32 percent. This was followed by the Millennials between the ages of 26 to 32 years, comprising around 33.59 percent of Instagram users.

As of December 2023, over 18 percent of the female Instagram users were between 25 to 34 years old, compared to only 1.9 percent who were older than 65 years. Instagram could therefore be considered as one of the most popular social networks for millennials in Singapore.

Instagram in general

The Facebook-owned social network counts about 1.21 billion active users worldwide. In Singapore, Instagram ranks third among the leading social media platforms . Compared to Facebook, Instagram is a more visual-based platform, originally designed as an online showroom for brands. Nowadays it provides the perfect environment for users to easily display their life to a larger audience and follow people/brands all over the world.

Social media in Singapore

Instagram has thus emerged as an important promotional platform for brands. In Singapore, brands could reach a target audience of up to 5.67 million people or about 86 percent of the population. Unlike traditional advertising channels such as in print media or television, social media advertising, especially Instagram, can be tailored to reach the intended audience. The private information that users share on the platform helps companies to address the right target group for their branding and advertising campaigns, therefore further enhancing their impact.

According to information from NapoleonCat, about 56.3 percent of Instagram users in Singapore were female. In total, there were approximately three million Instagram users in Singapore.

There were 3 216 400 Instagram users in Singapore in February 2024, which accounted for 49.4% of its entire population. The majority of them were women - 55.5%. People aged 25 to 34 were the largest user group (1 129 900). The highest difference between men and women occurs within people aged 18 to 24, where women lead by 291 100.

It comes as no surprise that the largest social network in Singapore is the messenger app WhatsApp and the social media giant Facebook. With Singapore home to one of the fastest internet connection speed in the world, the convenience of using these social networks on a daily basis has driven the growth of online content.

There are over 5.3 million social media users in Singapore

As of 2023, Singapore’s population has reached over six million people. These are, however, on an island with an area of only 719.9 square kilometer. The high technological standard has led to the internet penetration being extraordinarily high compared to other Southeast Asian countries. A high Internet penetration rate is usually a first indication that social media has a great importance for the country too. In this case the general number of social media users amounted to 5.08 million people, reaching 84.7 percent of the population. While WhatsApp is still the most popular social media channel in Singapore, it seems like Facebook is currently losing their younger users. Young Singaporean social media users would instead be flocking to Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok.

As of June 2023, Gen Z, or those between the ages of 19 and 25 years old, made up the majority of the TikTok user base in Singapore, with 33.32 percent. This was followed by Millennials between the ages of 26 and 32 years, comprising around 28.65 percent of TikTok users.

TikTok usage in Singapore

Introduced in 2018 in Singapore, TikTok has rapidly grown to become one of the country's most widely used social media platforms. As of June 2023, it was the most downloaded app in the city-state, recording 782.33 thousand downloads. This rise was also reflected in user engagement, as Singaporean users spent a monthly average of 20.18 hours on TikTok in 2022. It enabled TikTok to reach a monthly revenue of 1.11 million U.S. dollars in December 2022. The platform's rapid development has made it a major hub for the younger generation and is shaping digital trends in the country.

The rise of TikTok Shop 

TikTok is no longer just a video-sharing platform; it has expanded its functionality to become a social commerce hub. TikTok Shop was launched in Singapore in August 2022. The marketplace is integrated into the TikTok platform, enabling consumers and creators to connect and engage directly with brands and sellers. In the city-state, where e-commerce holds a major position, this new feature is in line with the trend towards social commerce. Indeed, in February 2023, 27 percent of people surveyed in the country replied that they regularly made purchases on social media. Among them, 30 percent used TikTok for their purchases.

Facebook was Singapore’s most popular social media app with an average penetration rate of 94 percent as of June 2016. Nevertheless, Facebook does not seem to be the platform of the future. Only about 84 percent of respondents aged 15 to 24 years old had a Facebook app installed on their mobile phone, slightly less than Instagram, which had an installation rate of 87 percent.

Importance of social media in Singapore

In a country where almost everyone has access to the internet, social media plays an important role in the purchasing behavior of Singaporeans. With 5.61 million inhabitants and 4.8 million internet users, Singapore has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world. It was forecasted that around 3.4 million inhabitants use social media on their mobile phones, representing almost 71 percent of all Singaporean internet users.

Does the most popular app reflect the most popular platform too?

Not necessarily – there are many ways to be on social media without installing an app. Those users were not taken into account in this survey. Other than that, it depends on what was considered a social media platform too. If you count YouTube and WhatsApp as social media platforms, they would emerge as the most popular. However, considering only the traditional platforms, Facebook remains by far the market leader, followed by Instagram and Twitter.

In 2023, around 5.84 million people accessed the internet through their mobile phones in Singapore. This figure is forecast to reach six million mobile phone users in 2029. The country has one of the highest mobile internet penetration rates in Asia.

Mobile internet providers in Singapore

In Singapore, mobile internet coverage is provided by the four major telecom operators Singtel, StarHub, M1, and TPG. As of November 2023, StarHub provided the best 5G availability across the country. In July 2022, Singtel, through its network, was the first operator to achieve nationwide 5G coverage in Singapore.

Mobile apps in Singapore 

This high connectivity and network coverage allow Singaporeans to use a variety of apps on their smartphones for daily activities. In 2023, a survey revealed that the most used mobile apps among Singaporeans were entertainment and video sharing apps. The most downloaded apps by Android users in Singapore in February 2024 were Instagram and Whatsapp Messenger.

According to a survey on social commerce conducted by Rakuten Insight in Singapore in 2023, approximately 64 percent of respondents between 16 and 24 years answered that they used Instagram for purchases during the last 12 months. The same survey indicated that around 27 percent of Singaporean consumers regularly shopped on social media.

In 2022, users worldwide spent approximately seven percent more hours per month using the Instagram mobile app compared to the previous year. India was the market that registered the highest growth in Instagram users' engagement on the app, with users in the country spending 15 percent more time on the app between 2021 and 2022. Turkey and Argentina followed, with users spending approximately six percent more hours per month on the app when compared to 2021. By comparison, Instagram app usage in Singapore and Indonesia reported a decrease of around four percent year-over-year, respectively.

The average ad spending per internet user is forecast to experience significant growth in all segments in 2028. This reflects the overall trend throughout the entire forecast period from 2018 to 2028. It is estimated that the indicator is continuously rising in all segments. In this regard, the Social Media Advertising Mobile segment achieves the highest value of 53.44 U.S. dollars in 2028. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

As of February 2025, South Korea had the highest social media penetration rate in the Asia-Pacific region, at around 95 percent. This was followed closely by Singapore with about 88 percent. In comparison, Afghanistan had a social media penetration rate of around 9.4 percent that year. Social media in APAC While Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia have relatively high social media penetration rates, the number of active social media users in the Asia-Pacific region paints a very different picture. China dominates the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in terms of the number of active social media users, surpassing the one-billion mark. This far exceeds the number of users in second-placed India. In comparison, during the same period, South Korea had about 48.9 million social media users, while Singapore had only around 5.2 million.  What are the most popular social networks? Facebook boasted an enormous number of monthly active users in the Asia-Pacific region, cementing itself as a firm favorite among Asia-Pacific social media users. While global platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and YouTube enjoy widespread popularity across the region, many markets have their own preferences for local social media platforms due to cultural relevance, government censorship, and tailored features. For instance, in China, WeChat dominates as an all-in-one app for messaging, payments, and social networking, while Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has the highest monthly active users among short-form video apps in China. In South Korea, KakaoTalk is widely used for messaging, as well as integrated services like mobile payments, gaming, and even ride-hailing. KakaoTalk’s monthly active users in South Korea has consistently increased in the past years.

According to a survey conducted in Singapore in April 2024, the leading social media platform on which users encountered harmful content was Facebook. It was followed by Instagram, with 45 percent of respondents.

The number of Twitter users in Indonesia was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 1.4 million users (+6.14 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Twitter user base is estimated to reach 24.25 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Twitter users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here regarding the platform twitter, 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.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 Twitter users in countries like Malaysia and Singapore.

As of November 2017, the Indonesian pop singer, actress, and soap opera star Laudya Cynthia Bella was the most-followed influencer with her account laudyacynthiabella. Starting as a model and being a Kawanku magazine finalist in 2002, she climbed all the way up to be one of the most popular persons on Instagram in Asia. Her fame not only points out a possible career on Instagram and beyond but also shows the rapid rise of Instagram in Indonesia in general. According to survey conducted in 2017, about 72 percent of merchants taking part in the survey were selling goods and services on Instagram.

Instagram in Asia

Instagram seems to be the preferred social network of the present and the future. Especially in Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia all have Instagram penetration rates higher than 50 percent. It should nevertheless be noted that only the youth is responsible for the high penetration rates. In Singapore, for example, the proportion of 18- to 34-year-olds is almost 60 percent of all Instagram users.

According to a survey in Singapore as of July 2022, about 47.79 percent of respondents used social media the most during the night, after eight pm in the evening. Meanwhile, usage in the early morning was the least popular time for social media users, accounted for 9.78 percent of the Singaporean respondents.