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.

Instagram’s most popular post

              As of April 2024, the most popular post on Instagram was Lionel Messi and his teammates after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup with Argentina, posted by the account @leomessi. Messi's post, which racked up over 61 million likes within a day, knocked off the reigning post, which was 'Photo of an Egg'. Originally posted in January 2021, 'Photo of an Egg' surpassed the world’s most popular Instagram post at that time, which was a photo by Kylie Jenner’s daughter totaling 18 million likes.
              After several cryptic posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself to be a part of a mental health campaign aimed at the pressures of social media use.

              Instagram’s most popular accounts

              As of April 2024, the official Instagram account @instagram had the most followers of any account on the platform, with 672 million followers. Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) was the most followed individual with 628 million followers, while Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) was the most followed woman on the platform with 429 million. Additionally, Inter Miami CF striker Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had a total of 502 million. Celebrities such as The Rock, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Grande all had over 380 million followers each.

              Instagram influencers

              In the United States, the leading content category of Instagram influencers was lifestyle, with 15.25 percent of influencers creating lifestyle content in 2021. Music ranked in second place with 10.96 percent, followed by family with 8.24 percent. Having a large audience can be very lucrative: Instagram influencers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom with over 90,000 followers made around 1,221 US dollars per post.

              Instagram around the globe

              Instagram’s worldwide popularity continues to grow, and India is the leading country in terms of number of users, with over 362.9 million users as of January 2024. The United States had 169.65 million Instagram users and Brazil had 134.6 million users. The social media platform was also very popular in Indonesia and Turkey, with 100.9 and 57.1, respectively. As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social network in the world, behind Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

In 2024, YouTube was the most popular social video platforms for users in the United States, with an estimated viewership of *** million viewers. Facebook ranked second, while Instagram had approximately *** million users engaging with the platform's Reels and posts on a monthly basis. TikTok was estimated to have a monthly audience of *** million users in the examined period.

Youtube social network and ground-truth communities Dataset information Youtube is a video-sharing web site that includes a social network. In the Youtube social network, users form friendship each other and users can create groups which other users can join. We consider such user-defined groups as ground-truth communities. This data is provided by Alan Mislove et al.

We regard each connected component in a group as a separate ground-truth community. We remove the ground-truth communities which have less than 3 nodes. We also provide the top 5,000 communities with highest quality which are described in our paper. As for the network, we provide the largest connected component.

more info : https://snap.stanford.edu/data/com-Youtube.html

YouTube gets an average of 14.3 billion total worldwide visits every month.

YouTube boasts an average of 23.7 hours per month spent by users.

Facebook and YouTube are still the most used social media platforms today.

As of September 2023, YouTube as the most popular social media platform for global users, with 97 percent of respondents reporting to use the popular video platform. YouTube was also the most popular social media among Gen Z users, with 96 percent of respondents in this age group reporting to have used the video platform as of the examined period. Facebook's usage kept steady among among the general digital population, with around eight in 10 reporting to have used the platform. In comparison, the social media's popularity was in free fall among gen Z users with only four in 10 among those surveyed reporting to engage with the Meta-powered platform.

Key YouTube Statistics (Editor’s Choice) YouTube recorded 70 billion monthly active users in March 2023, which includes 55.10% of worldwide active social media users. There have been more than 14 million daily active users currently on YouTube, in the United States of America this platform is accessed by 62% of users. YouTube is touted as the second largest search engine and the second most visited website after Google. Revenue earned by YouTube in the first two quarters of 2023 is around $14.358 billion. In 2023, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have recorded 80 million subscribers collectively worldwide. YouTube consumers view more than a billion hours of video per day. YouTube has more than 38 million active channels. In the fourth quarter of 2021, YouTube ad revenue has been $8.6 billion. Around 3 million paid subscribers to access YouTube TV. YouTube Premium has around 1 billion paid users. In 2023, YouTube was banned in countries such as China excluding Macau and Hong Kong, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and South Sudan. With 166 million downloads, the YouTube app has become the second most downloaded entertainment application across the world after Netflix. With 91 million downloads, YouTube Kids has become the sixth most downloaded entertainment app in the world. Nearly 90% of digital consumers access YouTube in the US, making it the most popular social network for watching video content. Over 70% of YouTube viewership takes place on its mobile application. More than 70% of YouTube video content watched by people is suggested by its algorithm. The average duration of a video on YouTube is 12 minutes. An average YouTube user spends 20 minutes and 23 seconds on the platform daily. Around 28% of YouTube videos that are published by popular channels are in the English language. 77% of YouTube users watch comedy content on the platform. With 247 million subscribers, T-Series has become the most subscribed channel on YouTube. Around 50 million users log on to YouTube every day. YouTube's biggest concurrent views record has been at 2.3 billion from when SpaceX has gone live on the platform to unveil Falcon Heavy Rocket. The majority of YouTube users are in the age group of 15 to 35 years in the US. The male-female ratio of YouTube users is 11:9. Apple INC. has been touted as the biggest advertiser on YouTube in 2020 spending $237.15 million. YouTube produced total revenue of $19.7 billion in 2020. As of 2021, the majority of YouTube users (467 million) are from India. It is the most popular platform in the United States with 74 percent of adult users. YouTube contributes to nearly 25% of mobile traffic worldwide. Daily live streaming on YouTube has increased by 45% in total in 2020. In India, around 225 million people are active on the platform each hour as per the 2021 statistics. YouTube Usage and Viewership Statistics #1. YouTube accounts for more than 2 billion monthly active users Around 2.7 billion users log on to YouTube each month. The number of monthly active users of YouTube is expected to grow even further. #2. Around 14.3 billion people visit the platform every month The number of YouTube visitors is far higher compared to Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram. #3. YouTube is accessible across 100 countries in 80 languages. The platform is widely available across different communities and nations. #4. 53.9% of YouTube users are men and 46.1% of women use the platform As of 2023 statistics, 53.9% of men use the platform and 46.1% of women over 18 years are on YouTube. The share in the number of males and females is 1.38 billion and 1.18 billion respectively. Age Group Male Female 18 to 24 8.5% 6% 25 to 34 11.6% 8.6% 35 to 44 9% 7.5% 45 to 54 6.2% 5.7% 55 to 64 4.4% 4.5% Above 65 4.3% 5.4% #5. 99% of YouTube users are active on other social media networks as well. Fewer than 1% of YouTube users are solely dependent on the platform. #6. Users spend around 20 minutes and 23 seconds per day on YouTube on average It is quite a generous amount of time spent on any social network platform. #7. YouTube is the second most visited site worldwide With more than 14 billion visits per month, YouTube has become the second most visited site in the world. However, its parent company Google is the most visited site across the globe. As per the statistics, YouTube is the third most popular searched word on Google. #8. 694000 hours of video content are streamed on YouTube per minute YouTube has outweighed Netflix as well in terms of streaming video content. #9. Over 81% of total internet users have accessed YouTube #10. Nearly 450 million hours of video content are uploaded on YouTube each hour More than 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube per day. #11. India has the maximum numb

According to a survey of internet users conducted in June 2023 in the United Kingdom, 77 percent of users aged between 25 and 44 years reported using Facebook at least monthly, while over 85 percent of users in the same age reported using YouTube monthly. Overall, 74 percent of social media users aged between 13 and 17 years reported engaging with TikTok, while 90 percent reported engaging with YouTube, while Instagram was used by 53 percent of respondents in the same demographic.

During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, around 83 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 78 and 69 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram, both run by Meta, Inc., due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

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

The vast majority of TikTok users are below 30 years old. Approximately 37 million Gen-Zers used TikTok in the US.

Youtube was the most popular social media platform among American Generation Alpha kids in 2024. This was revealed by a widespread survey among Gen Alpha parents. A staggering 90 percent of Gen Alpha users of Youtube were reported to use the app on a daily basis.

Snapchat now boasts over 319 million daily active users. That means it’s one of the most engaging platforms. Snapchat currently has a total user base of 800 million.

The 10 most popular hashtags in our dataset.

In 2020, YouTube had the most number of active users in Australia with around *********** people using the platform. TikTok showed rapid growth with *********** users actively using the social media app in Australia.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, approximately 83 percent selected increased exposure as a benefit of social media marketing. Increased traffic followed, mentioned by 73 percent of the respondents, while 65 percent cited generated leads.

              The multibillion-dollar social media ad industry

              Between 2019 – the last year before the pandemic – and 2024, global social media advertising spending skyrocketed by 140 percent, surpassing an estimated 230 billion U.S. dollars in the latter year. That figure was forecast to increase by nearly 50 percent by the end of the decade, exceeding 345 billion dollars in 2029. As of 2024, the social media networks with the most monthly active users were Facebook, with over three billion, and YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion.

              Pros and cons of GenAI for social media marketing

              According to another 2024 survey, generative artificial intelligence's (GenAI) leading benefits for social media marketing according to professionals worldwide included increased efficiency and easier idea generation. The third place was a tie between increased content production and enhanced creativity. All those advantages were cited by between 33 and 38 percent of the interviewees. As for GenAI's top challenges for global social media marketing,
              maintaining authenticity and the value of human creativity ranked first, mentioned by 43 and 40 percent of the respondents, respectively. Another 35 percent deemed ensuring the content resonates as an obstacle.

How many people use social media?

              Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2024, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over six billion in 2028.

              Who uses social media?
              Social networking is one of the most popular digital activities worldwide and it is no surprise that social networking penetration across all regions is constantly increasing. As of January 2023, the global social media usage rate stood at 59 percent. This figure is anticipated to grow as lesser developed digital markets catch up with other regions
              when it comes to infrastructure development and the availability of cheap mobile devices. In fact, most of social media’s global growth is driven by the increasing usage of mobile devices. Mobile-first market Eastern Asia topped the global ranking of mobile social networking penetration, followed by established digital powerhouses such as the Americas and Northern Europe.

              How much time do people spend on social media?
              Social media is an integral part of daily internet usage. On average, internet users spend 151 minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of 40 minutes since 2015. On average, internet users in Latin America had the highest average time spent per day on social media.

              What are the most popular social media platforms?
              Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social network worldwide. In June 2023, the top social media apps in the Apple App Store included mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger, as well as the ever-popular app version of Facebook.

A survey conducted in Japan during fiscal year 2024 showed that the messaging app LINE was used by **** percent of the respondents. While globally leading networks such as Instagram, X, and Facebook do get their fair share of popularity within the Japanese social media market, the only platform able to compete with LINE in terms of penetration rates is YouTube, which was used by **** percent of the respondents. What makes LINE so popular?The success story of the messaging service LINE started back in 2011 during the Great East Japan Earthquake. While conventional communication channels in affected areas had broken down to a large degree due to damages brought about by the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, official sources as well as private individuals turned to online options for communicating news and confirming the safety of friends and family members. The LINE app, which was initially developed for communication between employees at NHN Japan, a Japanese subsidiary of the South Korean internet powerhouse Naver, was released for public use later that year. It appealed greatly to Japanese consumers due to its unique and customizable design, which allowed for both private and business usage. Today, the app is operated by LY Corporation, which is part of a joint venture between SoftBank Group and Naver.How do Japanese use social networks?Partly due to spread of smartphones in the 2010s, social media platforms have become increasingly important in people's daily lives. As a comparison of social network penetration rates of different countries shows, a vast majority of people in Japan use social networks. People in Japan on average spend several dozen minutes per weekday on social media, making this activity one of the most time-consuming online activities. According to one survey, the leading reasons for using social media are communicating with already existing acquaintances as well as searching for information.