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.

Users spend an average of 19.6 hours per month on TikTok alone. This works out to be approximately 39 minutes per day.

Social media usage in Romania continues to evolve, with Facebook maintaining its dominance while newer platforms gain traction. As of May 2025, ***percent of Romanian respondents reported using Facebook, solidifying its position as the most popular social media platform in the country. Instagram and TikTok followed, with ***and ***percent of users, respectively, highlighting the growing diversity in social media preferences among Romanians. TikTok the new trendsetter in Romania TikTok's popularity in Romania has surged recently, as evidenced by its significant revenue growth. The platform's monthly revenue skyrocketed from approximately ** thousand U.S. dollars in October 2020 to an impressive *** million U.S. dollars by September 2024. This substantial increase reflects the platform's growing user base and engagement levels in the country. However, it's worth noting that TikTok's monthly downloads have fluctuated, peaking at over *** thousand in August 2022 before decreasing to *** thousand in September 2024. Social media usage increases steadily As of January 2024, Romania boasted **** million social media users, with over **** of respondents following friends, family, and acquaintances on these platforms. The primary reasons for social media use in Romania include staying connected with loved ones and filling spare time. This trend partially explains the rise in TikTok users, with the platform poised to potentially surpass Facebook in the near future. Looking ahead, the number of social media users in Romania is forecast to increase by ***** percent between 2024 and 2029, reaching an estimated ***** million users by 2029. This growth trajectory underscores the continued importance of social media in Romanian society.

These TikTok user statistics tell the whole story of the new social media giant and give you some insights into the app's future.

TikTok has risen through the ranks to become the 5th most popular social media network worldwide.

In August 2025, X, formerly known as Twitter, held a market share of around 34.83 percent in Hong Kong's social media scene in terms of pageviews across all devices, followed by Facebook and YouTube. The American social news and discussion website Reddit has gained traction since the anti-government protests in the city in 2020. Facebook is losing ground A few years before 2017, Facebook controlled over 80 percent of the social media arena in Hong Kong. The drastic change started in 2018, when the networking site lost nearly 11 percentage points and another 19 percentage points in the following year. For many Gen Z and Millennials in the financial hub, Instagram became the favorite social media platform and YouTube was used more often than Facebook. Facebook was still the second place to go after Instagram for product research, it has been losing its appeal among young users and advertisers. Platforms claiming the new spots When it came to advertising audience size, X took the lead. YouTube came in second, however, its ad reach in Hong Kong was among the lowest in the Asia-Pacific region. In comparison, the fourth placeholder Instagram has been picking up steam, reaching 4.14 percent of internet users in Hong Kong. However, the biggest industry threat was TikTok, the most downloaded social media app in Hong Kong as of the time of writing. TikTok’s rising popularity among teenage users may probably change the game of video consumption.

TikTok has a significantly larger female user base globally.

In 2023, Instagram claimed the top spot as the preferred social media platform for shopping among Gen Z and millennial consumers. However, Gen Z also showed an inclination towards shopping via TikTok, while millennials leaned towards both YouTube and Facebook over the trendy Chinese short-video platform. Conversely, older generations exhibited similar preferences for social commerce, with both favoring Facebook and YouTube over the more visually appealing Instagram and TikTok.

Adults in Taiwan are still using Facebook more than any other social network platforms. A 2024 survey reported that around ***** percent of surveyed Taiwanese internet users were using Facebook. Instagram followed with a huge discrepancy. The share of respondents was below ** percent. Facebook in Taiwan Facebook dominates the social network landscape in Taiwan. The U.S. tech giant once stated that the island has one of the world’s highest per capita penetration rates. With a high audience reach and user engagement, the platform is regarded as an essential marketing channel, especially among small and medium-sized business. However, its instant messenger is still facing a serious competition against ****, which has been the most popular chat app on the island for the past years. The fall of the social media giant Although Facebook is more widely used among Taiwanese users, ******* is used more frequently on a daily basis. On average, Taiwanese internet users spent almost *** hours on the video-sharing platform per day. On the other hand, Facebook's popularity has been declining, not only in Taiwan but also worldwide. Instagram and TikTok were more beloved among Taiwanese younger generations.

With approximately 1.6 billion video views in March 2019, LADbible was ranked first among the most watched Facebook video publishers. Second-ranked UNILAD generated 1.6 billion video views. Both social news and entertainment publishers are owned by the British media company The LADbible Group Ltd.

Social video consumption Watching a video on the likes of Facebook or Instagram is now part of everyday social media usage. Whilst YouTube is as popular as ever, it is no longer the only source out there for online video viewers. With companies and influencers utilizing video for marketing purposes on Instagram, concertgoers broadcasting the event to their friends via Facebook Live and Twitter users endlessly retweeting their favorite vlogs, video content on social is here to stay. Social media is an important channel for video producers and many traditional media brands have started to generate content specifically to be distributed and discussed on social platforms. News, ads, viral moments, celebrity vlogs, sporting clips – the variety of video clips on social media is seemingly endless and users are highly engaged with video content on Facebook. As of February 2018, Facebook ranked first among social video platforms, accounting for a significant share of social media video posts across all tiers of influencers. The network accounted for 50 percent of social video posts by celebrity influencers with more than 20 million followers.

Mobile social video
A significant chunk of social video is consumed via mobile. One of the most popular mobile video apps is TikTok, which has over 3.7 million monthly active users in the United States. TikTok is a mobile app for creating and sharing short videos, which also can be edited in-app. The app merged with Musical.ly in August 2018, thus gaining access to the teenage online user market in the United States. Popular types of TikTok videos include dances, comedy sketches or lip-synchs to songs. The platform is frequently considered the spiritual successor to the now-defunct mobile video app Vine, and popular TikTok videos are frequently shared across other social networks.

According to a survey on the most-viewed content formats on social media conducted in Indonesia in June 2023, approximately 40 percent of Indonesian respondents stated that they enjoyed watching TikTok videos. Meanwhile, 10 percent of them stated that they enjoyed watching Instagram posts.   Exploring video content trends and advertising impact in Indonesia  From music to video tutorials, videos have become the most popular visual medium on the internet. In 2023, almost every Indonesian watched online videos weekly. Video advertising, whether from trusted brands or influencers, has also increased in recent years and caught consumers’ attention. A recent study revealed that the most influential advertisements for Indonesians were those made by well-known brands compared to influencers. In addition, Indonesian consumers will be more likely to click on ads on social media when the content is relevant to them. The changing face of social media: Trends in Indonesia's online landscape From the era of Vine to the rise of TikTok, short video memes became the core of social media content. These memes have since been adopted by other popular social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. As of 2023, it is estimated that more than 120 million people are TikTok users in Indonesia. However, TikTok’s dominance does not overshadow the significance of Facebook. Although Facebook users are gradually declining in Indonesia, it still has the largest market share among social media platforms, especially on mobile phones and tablets.

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.

The video-sharing social media app TikTok has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times every month over the past year, with considerably more downloads in the winter months than in spring and summer. In *************, TikTok was downloaded *** thousand times.

TikTok demographics

Since its launch in 2017, the social media app has really taken off with the younger demographic, and especially with “Gen Z”. At the end of 2019, *** percent of smartphone owners in the UK were using TikTok. The app is also slightly more of a hit among the female demographic than it is with male smartphone users. 

Children and social media

TikTok isn’t as big as the most popular social media sites and apps like Facebook and Snapchat, although it is already being used by ** percent of children. And with over a third of Facebook users having considered leaving the social network in 2019, who knows what the social media landscape will look like for future generations.

Social video platform TikTok made significant gains in popularity in the Netherlands between 2020 and 2023. In 2023, there were approximately four million TikTok users in the Netherlands, up from three million in the previous year. Users aged 20 to 24 years accounted for the biggest share of TikTok’s audience in the country, recording approximately 850,000 users in 2023.

Mobile social As of the end of 2022, mobile social media were the most engaging app category for users in the Netherlands. On average, Dutch users was reported spending 65 minutes per day on social apps, compared to 26 minutes spent interacting with casual gaming apps, and 14 daily minutes spent on shopping apps on a daily basis. Mobile-first communication and chat apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat ranked among the most popular social platforms among Dutch users in the third quarter of 2022. Social video app TikTok has become increasingly more popular, reaching four million users in 2023.

Most popular Dutch content creators With 14 million followers and several years of activity within the global beauty content community, Nikkie Tutorials was the second most popular Dutch content creator on YouTube in February 2023. With the rise of TikTok and short-video features like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, video has become one of the most engaging formats for content creators to connect with their audiences in the Netherlands as in the rest of the digital market. As of September 2022, online Dutch influencer Sherell Martini reportedly had 4.84 million TikTok followers, while online personality and hair influencer Quinity Mirjam recorded over three million followers.

In 2024, Facebook was the most popular app on Android, registering more than 913 million downloads worldwide. Instagram ranked second with approximately 710 million downloads. TikTok followed with around 549 million downloads globally during the same examined period.

Launched first in India after the TikTok ban in August 2020, YouTube Shorts rolled out globally in June 2021. The feature, which is accessible via the YouTube app, reached two billion monthly logged-in users as of July 2023. YouTube has been heavily promoting its short-video format platform since its global launch, including redirecting users automatically to Shorts when the YouTube app is opened and launching the YouTube Shorts Funds to entice creators' participation. In 2022, user and travel vlogger Shangerdanger took the crown for the most popular Short on YouTube, with his video “Diver cracks Egg at 45 ft Deep".

TikTok versus Reels: competitors’ comparison Launched in September 2016 in China as Douyin, TikTok went on to become of the most engaging social media platforms for global users, challenging mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in their primary markets such as the United States, Brazil, and Japan. TikTok’s popularity exploded between 2019 and 2020, as the work was experiencing the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Reels, Instagram’s in-app short video experience, debuted in 2020 as Facebook (now Meta Platforms) bet on the short-video feature to improve users’ engagement. While videos were an already popular format on Facebook and Instagram, social short videos soon became an even more popular format with users. As of June 2022, the average video viewing rate for Reels on Instagram was 2.54 percent, while for videos was of 1.74 percent as of June 2022.

Content is key: creators drive an entire economy As of July 2022, influencers on TikTok and YouTube generate the largest share of video views, over 90 percent, while content produced by media companies and brands constitute only a smaller part of the video views generated on the two video platforms. As content creators are emerging even more clearly as the backbone of social media marketing and advertising, it is not a surprise that an entire economy devoted to their needs and presence has developed in recent years. In 2022, companies supporting the creators’ economy by offering merchandising services had an annual average revenue of over 500 million U.S. dollars, while companies overseeing subscription services generated approximately 300 million U.S. dollars.

Social Media Platforms Market Outlook

The global social media platforms market size was valued at approximately USD 180 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach around USD 400 billion by 2032, exhibiting a robust CAGR of 9.1% over the forecast period. This impressive growth is primarily driven by the increasing penetration of smartphones, the expansion of internet connectivity, and the rising demand for digital advertising.

Several key factors are driving the growth of the social media platforms market. First and foremost, the increasing availability and affordability of smartphones and internet services globally have significantly expanded the user base of social media platforms. With the proliferation of affordable smartphones and widespread network coverage, even users in developing regions are now able to access social media, contributing to the market's expansion. Furthermore, mobile internet speeds have improved significantly, enabling richer media experiences on social platforms, which in turn attract more users and advertisers.

Another critical growth factor is the rising importance of digital marketing and advertising. Businesses of all sizes are leveraging social media platforms to reach their target audiences more effectively and efficiently. Given the advanced targeting capabilities and analytics offered by these platforms, advertisers can optimize their campaigns for better performance, thus funneling a significant portion of their advertising budgets to social media. Additionally, the integration of e-commerce features within social media platforms has created new revenue streams and engagement opportunities, further propelling market growth.

Content creation and user engagement are also key drivers in the social media platforms market. User-generated content (UGC) plays a vital role in keeping platforms vibrant and engaging. Social media platforms provide various tools and features, such as live streaming, stories, and reels, which encourage users to create and share content. This not only enhances user engagement but also attracts more users to join the platforms. Influencer marketing is another growing trend, where influencers with large followings collaborate with brands to promote products and services, thereby driving sales and brand awareness.

From a regional perspective, North America and Asia Pacific are the dominant players in the social media platforms market. North America, with mature markets in the U.S. and Canada, has a high penetration rate of social media usage and significant digital advertising expenditure. Conversely, the Asia Pacific region is witnessing rapid growth due to its large population, increasing internet penetration, and the rising popularity of regional social media platforms. Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa also present substantial growth opportunities due to expanding internet access and increasing smartphone adoption.

Platform Type Analysis

The social media platforms market can be segmented by platform type into social networking, media sharing, blogging & microblogging, discussion forums, and others. Social networking platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, are among the most popular and widely used types. These platforms enable users to create profiles, connect with friends and colleagues, and share various forms of content. Social networking platforms are particularly popular due to their diverse feature sets, including messaging, multimedia sharing, and online communities, which cater to a broad range of user needs.

Media sharing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok focus primarily on the sharing of videos and images. These platforms have gained massive popularity, especially among younger demographics, due to their focus on visual content and ease of use. The rise of short-form video content has been a significant trend, with platforms like TikTok leading the way. Media sharing platforms attract a large number of content creators and influencers, who generate engaging content that drives user engagement and retention.

Blogging and microblogging platforms, such as WordPress and Tumblr, provide users with a space to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions through longer-form text content. Microblogging platforms like Twitter allow for shorter, more frequent updates, which can be particularly effective for real-time communication and news

Tiktok network graph with 5,638 nodes and 318,986 unique links, representing up to 790,599 weighted links between labels, using Gephi network analysis software.

Source of:

Peña-Fernández, Simón, Larrondo-Ureta, Ainara, & Morales-i-Gras, Jordi. (2022). Current affairs on TikTok. Virality and entertainment for digital natives. Profesional De La Información, 31(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5962655

Abstract:

Since its appearance in 2018, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms among digital natives because of its algorithm-based engagement strategies, a policy of public accounts, and a simple, colorful, and intuitive content interface. As happened in the past with other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, various media are currently seeking ways to adapt to TikTok and its particular characteristics to attract a younger audience less accustomed to the consumption of journalistic material. Against this background, the aim of this study is to identify the presence of the media and journalists on TikTok, measure the virality and engagement of the content they generate, describe the communities created around them, and identify the presence of journalistic use of these accounts. For this, 23,174 videos from 143 accounts belonging to media from 25 countries were analyzed. The results indicate that, in general, the presence and impact of the media in this social network are low and that most of their content is oriented towards the creation of user communities based on viral content and entertainment. However, albeit with a lesser presence, one can also identify accounts and messages that adapt their content to the specific characteristics of TikTok. Their virality and engagement figures illustrate that there is indeed a niche for current affairs on this social network.

According to a 2024 survey in the United States, social media platforms with shoppable features, such as Facebook and TikTok, were the most popular live-commerce platforms for all generations. For instance, 77 percent of consumers between the ages of 16 and 24 used these platforms to make live shopping purchases. In comparison, live shopping apps were the least popular among all age groups. Only four percent of 25 to 34-year-olds bought something from live commerce apps.

As of 2024, Google was the most valuable media brand in the world, with an estimated brand value of about ****** billion U.S. dollars. TikTok/Douyin took the second place, with a brand value of nearly **** billion dollars. The Chinese short-form video platform ranked ahead of Facebook. TikTok: A global social media marketing sensation Initially, many thought TikTok was just a passing fad, a craze that would soon fade away. However, the platform has proven to be a powerhouse of social media. As of April 2024, the digital playground owned by Beijing-based tech company ByteDance was one of the most popular social media networks worldwide, with more than *** billion monthly active users. This popularity has made TikTok attractive for brands to reach and engage with potential customers. In fact, TikTok was one of the leading social media platforms among marketers worldwide. Around ** percent used the network to promote their brands, products, or services. The recent restrictions on the platform in the United States will likely continue to be watched by marketing experts and users alike. Most valuable brand in the world Brand value is a term marketers use to describe a brand's worth. In 2024, Apple was the highest-valued brand worldwide. The company had an estimated brand value of roughly *** billion dollars.