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 2022, Social networking sites are estimated to reach 3.96 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.

As of October 2022, TikTok was estimated to have 1.5 billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. The popular short-video social platform was projected to reach two billion MAU by the end of 2026. In comparison, social and photo platform Instagram was projected to reach 1.5 billion MAU by the end of 2026.

Chinese citizens displayed a strong online presence, having approximately 1.08 billion active social media users as of February 2025. Other Asia-Pacific countries and regions appeared to trail behind China in terms of their social media engagement. India and Indonesia, the second- and third-ranked countries in terms of number of active social media users, had 491 million and 143 million active social media users, respectively. Leading social media platforms Facebook reigns worldwide and in the Asia-Pacific region as the most-used social media site, having displayed an increasing number of daily active users. However, Asian social networks, such as WeChat and Douyin, have also gained immense popularity in the Asia-Pacific region by offering content and services tailored to APAC preferences. Acting not only as a messaging and social media service, WeChat is a platform for online shopping and payment services. The social networking site, owned by Tencent, was the sixth most used social media platform globally. A connected region The Asia-Pacific region has gone through a technological evolution and alongside the region, its citizens have willingly adopted this change. This is conveyed through the internet penetration rate, which has more than doubled since 2010 in Asia. A better internet infrastructure has catalyzed the emergence of social media throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

In May 2022, YouTube was France's most used online network, with 47.91 million monthly active users. Meta-owned Facebook and WhatsApp ranked second and third, with 47.89 and 37.36 million monthly active users, respectively. In addition, Pinterest and Twitter each had around 17 million monthly active users in the country.

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.

Truth Social, the Trump-owned social media platform, started trading publicly on March 26, 2024. The social network has fewer users and a lower valuation than Meta Platforms, X (formerly Twitter), and Pinterest did at their initial public offerings. The market capitalization of Truth Social when it went public was estimated to be six billion dollars, with an estimated five million monthly active users.

TikTok reported reaching 1 billion monthly active users in September 2021, becoming the most recent online platform to reach this milestone. It took the social network 5.1 years to cross 1 billion MAU. Facebook Messenger reached the same number of monthly active users within 4.9 years and remains the fastest social network worldwide to have done so. Facebook, the first social network with 1 billion monthly active users, took 8.7 years to reach this audience in 2013.

TikTok has 102.3 million monthly active users in the US alone. This is forecasted to reach 121.1 million by 2027.

You might be surprised how much Truth Social is worth based on its small number of users.

As of February 2024, Twitter is ranked as the 12h most popular social media site in the world. The platform currently has 436 million active monthly users.

In the last quarter of 2023, 35 million people used the social media platform Odnoklassniki (Ok.ru) in Russia each month on average. The number of monthly active users (MAU) of Odnoklassniki in the country saw a decrease from the corresponding period of the previous year.

These Twitter user statistics will give you the complete story of where Twitter is at today and what the future looks like for the social media company.

As of October 2022, TikTok's global monthly active users were estimated to make up around 94 percent of the platform's user base. In comparison, users in the United States engaging with the platform on a monthly basis were estimated to compose a six percent share of the total. In the same period, 11 percent of YouTube MAU were estimated to be based in the U.S., while almost 90 percent of the platform's MAU were composed of global users.

The US has historically been the target country for Twitter since its launch in 2006. This is the full breakdown of Twitter users by country.

TikTok has a significantly larger female user base globally.

Globally the average user spends 52 minutes on TikTok every day. About 90% of their worldwide users access TikTok on a daily basis.

Teenagers make up the largest group of active users on TikTok.

These are the key Twitter user statistics that you need to know.

As of September 2023, 29 percent of Facebook users in the United States were aged 30 to 39 years, while a further 29 percent of users were aged 50 to 64 years, making these demographics the biggest audiences of the online network in the country. Meta’s Instagram was also popular among users aged 30 to 39 years, who accounted for 32 percent of the audience of the photo-based platform, while those aged 18 to 29 years accounted for another third of the network’s U.S. users. Overall, TikTok and Snapchat were the most popular social media platforms amongst younger audiences, while LinkedIn was the least used platform by those aged 18 to 29 in the United States as of 2023.

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 342 million users in 2029. As of 2023, the social network user penetration in the United States amounted to an impressive 91.56 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 45 percent of all social media visits in 2023, followed by Pinterest with 21.2 percent of visits.

The global social media landscape

As of April 2024, 5.07 billion people were social media users, accounting for 62.6 percent of the world’s population. Northern Europe was the region with the highest social media penetration rate with a reach of 80.2 percent, followed by Western Europe with 78.2 percent and Eastern Asia 74.9 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. 272014 YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp followed, all with two billion or more MAU.