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.

How many people use social media? Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2024, over **** ******* people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over *** billion in 2029. 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 ** 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 *** minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of ** 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 *** billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately *** 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.

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.

In March 2025, ******** accounted for ** percent of all social media site visits in the United States, confirming its position as the leading social media website by far. Other social media platforms, despite their popularity, had to make do with smaller shares of visits across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices combined. ********* ranked second with ***** percent of all U.S. social media site visits, while X (previously Twitter) accounted for ***** percent of the total visits in the country. Additionally, the U.S. is home to the third largest social media audience worldwide. Facebook: mobile vs desktop usage At the beginning of 2022, around ** percent of Facebook users across the globe were using the platform’s social networking services exclusively via mobile phone, while only *** percent reported using their desktop or laptop devices. In September 2022, three Facebook Inc. products occupied some of the leading positions as most downloaded social networking apps on the Apple App Store in the United States. WhatsApp’s messaging platform ranked second with more than *** million downloads, while Facebook and the instant-messaging service Messenger followed ranking third and fifth with *** million and **** million downloads respectively. Social media evolution Between 2012 and 2024, the daily time spent on social networks worldwide experienced an almost constant increase, with users reaching an average of *** minutes per day in 2023, with a decrease to *** daily minutes of engagement in 2024. However, users’ favorite platforms have changed since 2019, and the power balance appears to be shifting further from Facebook’s market dominance. Not only Facebook’s user growth rate is estimated to slow down in the next years, but users belonging to Generation Z appear to prefer video-first social platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events friends. Global impact of social mediaSocial media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

In 2022, Instagram was the world's leading social media app, with *** million downloads WhatsApp ranked second with *** million downloads, while Telegram surpassed the remaining mobile versions of Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Messenger. Newcomer BeReal, a photo-sharing social media app launched in 2020, entered the ranking in tenth position with over ** million global downloads during the examined year.

In 2022, Instagram was the most popular social media platform among Asian influencers, with more than ** percent of influencers in the region using the platform. YouTube ranked second, after having been the most popular platform among influencers in Asia in 2020 and 2021.

During a July 2022 survey among B2B marketers who used social media platforms for paid content promotion worldwide, ** percent of respondents stated that they made use of LinkedIn over the previous 12 months. Facebook was ranked second with ** percent of respondents, which was a drop of ** percentage points, compared to 2021, when ** percent stated using it.

As of 2022, 26 percent of worldwide social media users were located in Eastern Asia, followed by 18.44 percent of using being located in Southern Asia. Overall, Northern America accounted for almost 9.5 percent of all social media users, whilst Central Africa made up just 0.46 percent.

According to an online study conducted in the United States in 2022, Twitter was the preferred social media platform used by journalists for their work . Overall, 69 percent of U.S. journalists stated Twitter was the most used, or the second most used, social media site that they used for their job. Additionally, 52 percent of respondents reported using Facebook for this purpose, whilst around two in ten said Instagram was the most or second most used platform.

According to a survey conducted in the United States in December 2022, ** percent of respondents aged 13 to 24 years had used YouTube in the past 7 days, whilst ** percent of those aged 35 and older had. **** of respondents over the age of ** had used Facebook in the previous week. Following YouTube, Instagram and TikTok were the most popular platforms among younger U.S. consumers, with approximately ** percent of respondents aged 13 to 34 years having used these platforms in the previous 7 days.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, TikTok was the most popular social media platform for Gen Z consumers to buy products from in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to be the preferred choice for older generations. Additionally, millennials displayed an equal preference for TikTok and Instagram, with ** percent of respondents stating that they had shopped through each platform.

In 2022, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for around ****** million social media users, ranking as the fifth most popular region for this type of platform worldwide. Brazil and Mexico were the countries with the continent’s biggest social network audiences, registering ****** million and ***** million users each in the measured period. Additionally, Brazil is also the fifth largest market for social media worldwide.

Meta’s new contenders

The products owned by social media giant Meta (formerly known as Facebook Inc.) still reign across the social media landscape in Latin America and the Caribbean, as Facebook is still used by almost ** percent of the continent’s population. However, new competitors like Telegram and content-focused networks like TikTok are challenging Meta’s hegemony. The ByteDance-owned company TikTok has already surpassed Instagram in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru regarding the number of users, becoming the second-largest network in these countries.

Hardships on internet access

Even though Latin America increases its connectivity in traffic via mobile devices, the inequality in access to the internet throughout the continent also is also reflected in the presence of its populations on social media platforms. Almost ** percent of people living in South America have access to these networks, against ** percent of those living in Central America and only ** percent of those living in the Caribbean.

In 2022, there are around 23.14 million social media users in Peru, around 1.25 million more than the previous year. This figure is forecast to grow to 28.03 million users by 2027. In the same year, more than 68.68 percent of the population in the South American country accessed social media.

In 2023, Facebook was projected to generate an estimated 28 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in the United States. The social platform’s revenue is set to increase to 31 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. The CAGR of Facebook's revenue was estimated to reach six percent during the measured period.

The number of Twitter users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 4.3 million users (+5.32 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Twitter user base is estimated to reach 85.08 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 Canada and Mexico.

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.

In 2022, there were around **** billion social media users in China. Despite Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter being blocked in the country, local social networking sites such as WeChat and Weibo have been attracting millions of users, making China the world’s biggest social media market.

What is the role of social media in China? Around ** percent of the Chinese population use internet. Social networking plays a huge role among netizens, especially the younger generation. Chinese social media, just like Western equivalents, not only serves as a way to communicate online, but also as one of the main sources of news and entertainment, e-payments, shopping advisors, and dating channels. In 2021, over ** percent of surveyed social media users said they mostly appreciated that social networks help them to keep in touch with friends and family, but also share their life moments and thoughts.

What are the most popular social media platforms?

WeChat (Weixin in Chinese) is by far the most commonly seen social app in the country, used for anything from texting/calling to photo and video sharing, dating, financial services, game-playing, shopping, ride hailing, and so on. However, Chinese social media scene is quite diverse and dynamic, therefore, it is not just about WeChat. Instant messaging app Tencent QQ, microblogging site Weibo, video sharing app Youku Tudou, short-form video app Douyin (aka TikTok), photo editing and sharing app Meitu, restaurant recommendation and food ordering platform Meituan, Quora equivalent Zhihu, and dating app Momo are just a few among the most popular Chinese social media examples.

Over *** million people in Lithuania accessed Facebook at least once a week as of 2022. Thus, Facebook reached the highest number of users compared to other social media platforms on a weekly basis. To compare, the weekly audience of WhatsApp was close to *** thousand users.

A report held in June 2022 among Gen Z and millennials in the United States found that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter were the most used social media platforms for news about national politics and government, with only a handful using TikTok, Snapchat, or LinkedIn for this purpose. Instagram and Reddit were the most popular choice for ** and ** percent of respondents respectively, but Facebook retained its status as the most used network for political news.