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.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 143 minutes per day, down from 151 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 three hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just two 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.

Global ad spend were expected to reach over $134 billion in 2022. This means that it has increased by over 17% yearly.

As of April 2025, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 25 and 34 years, and 29.5 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16.3 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44 year age group. Instagram users With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in India and in the United States, which have respectively 413.85 million and 171.7 million Instagram users each. Instagram features One of the most popular features of Instagram is Stories. Users can post photos and videos to their Stories stream and the content is live for others to view for 24 hours before it disappears. In January 2019, the company reported that there were 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users. Instagram Stories directly competes with Snapchat, another photo sharing app that initially became famous due to it’s “vanishing photos” feature. As of the first quarter of 2025, Snapchat had 460 million daily active users.

Which countries spent the most and least time on social media?

Over the last two observations, the reach by social network is forecast to significantly increase in all segments. Concerning the nine selected segments, the segment Facebook has the largest reach by social network with 470.66 million users. Contrastingly, Tumblr is ranked last, with 9.31 million users. Their difference, compared to Facebook, lies at 461.35 million users. Find further statistics on other topics such as a comparison of the social network reach in Argentina and a comparison of the ad spending in the United States. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

Target group study with intensive users of social networks. The focus was on the frequency of use, significance and purpose of use of social media. Further questions were: How do social networks affect the information behaviour of their users? Where do social networks come into contact with political content or topics? Other focal points were political information behaviour and the credibility of social media. In addition, the following research questions were examined: Which information offerings of the Federal Government are important and which are actually used? What are the expectations of these information services? What are the respondents´ attitudes towards the relationship between politics and social networks?

Topics: Social media use: frequency of use of social media; platforms used at least once a day; ranking of the four most frequently used social networks; preferred devices for social media use; type of use or reasons for use; attitude towards social media in general with regard to time spent, credibility of information, quality of social contacts, relevant information and life without social networks.

Politics and media: political interest; points of contact with politics in everyday life; frequency of use of various media offers for political information; attitude towards politics and political information in social networks with regard to trustworthiness, credibility and orientation.

Political information behaviour in social networks: frequency of interaction with political activities of others in social networks; frequency of own political activities in social networks; seen political content on the social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and WhatsApp; opinion on political posts and contributions in the used social networks; personal consequences of political oversupply; Facebook users: active search for political content or automatic display in newsfeed; comparison of the quality of political discussions within and outside social networks; friends in social networks personally known; similar or rather different political views of these friends; own reaction to political posts of friends; following politicians, parties and political institutions in social networks; following persons and organizations sharing personal political opinions or with different political opinions; reasons why the respondent follows politicians etc. in social networks; perception of hate comments; evaluation of the law against hate comments.

Information behaviour concerning the Federal Government: importance of selected information offerings of the Federal Government; perception and frequency of use of these information offerings; expectations of information offerings of the Federal Government in social networks.

Living conditions: assessment of one´s own economic situation; satisfaction with democracy; democracy as a good form of government; party identification.

Demography: sex; age; household size; education; gainful employment; occupational status; federal state; city size; net household income.

Additionally coded was: weighting factor.

The ability to build upon previous knowledge—cumulative cultural evolution—is a hallmark of human societies. While cumulative cultural evolution depends on the interaction between social systems, cognition and the environment, there is increasing evidence that cumulative cultural evolution is facilitated by larger and more structured societies. However, such effects may be interlinked with patterns of social wiring, thus the relative importance of social network architecture as an additional factor shaping cumulative cultural evolution remains unclear. By simulating innovation and diffusion of cultural traits in populations with stereotyped social structures, we disentangle the relative contributions of network architecture from those of population size and connectivity. We demonstrate that while more structured networks, such as those found in multilevel societies, can promote the recombination of cultural traits into high-value products, they also hinder spread and make products more likely to go extinct. We find that transmission mechanisms are therefore critical in determining the outcomes of cumulative cultural evolution. Our results highlight the complex interaction between population size, structure and transmission mechanisms, with important implications for future research.

Methods These data were generated by computer simulations: we constructed two agent-based models to simulate cultural evolution on different types of social network architectures.

We first generated social networks with six different architectures—random, small-world, lattice, modular, modular lattice, and multilevel—capturing different levels and combinations of clustering and modularity. We expressed these network architectures in populations with different sizes and densities of connections (average degree), where all individuals in the network had the same degree. We then build two agent-based models to explore how network architecture affects cumulative culture evolution. Briefly, our models allow innovations of cultural products to take place along two cultural lineages, with the knowledge of new products being spread through social connections via two transmission mechanics: either one-to-many or one-to-one diffusion. Once a high level of product diversity has been reached in both lineages, agents can recombine each lineage’s products into one with a final higher payoff product (hereafter ‘recombination’). Finally, we compared the performance of agents arranged in the different network architecture in terms of time to cultural recombination (i.e. tempo), time to diffusion, and the diversity of cultural traits.

The two agent-based models differed in the mechanics of information transmission: one-to-many versus one-to-one diffusion pathways. In our first agent-based model (model 1), all agents were initialized with an inventory of three items from each of two lineages. In each simulation round (epoch), each focal agent was selected once, at random, and a partner randomly chosen from its social network connections. These agents combined one or two items from their inventory in proportion to their value into a triad of items. If this triad was a valid product, knowledge of that product was learned, spread immediately to all their network connections (one-to-many diffusion), and subsequently became available as an ingredient for making new products. Simulations finished once a recombination product (a triad that recombines specific products from both lineages) was first innovated. We ran 5,000 simulations for each of the network architecture types, sizes and densities of connections, recording time to achieve the recombination product (in epochs) and tracking the diversity of cultural innovations over time. An epoch was one simulation round in which each agent was selected once as a focal agent in random order.

Our second agent-based model (model 2) extended the first by changing the transmission mechanic and altering the set of valid combinations such that the model can run past the first innovation of either recombination product. Transmission of valid products now occurred between dyads of agents (one-to-one diffusion) prior to choosing items from their inventory, in contrast to the broadcast style of diffusion in model 1. Secondly, if a triad contained either recombination products, the final product was that recombination product. In the case where both recombination products were present in the triad, one was chosen as the final product at random. This allowed us to track the diffusion of recombination products beyond their innovation. We also ran 5,000 simulations for the same parameter space of model 1, recording time (in epochs) to cultural lineage recombination, as well as time to diffusion to the majority of the network.

These are the key social media statistics that you need to know.

The transmission of infectious disease through a population is often modeled assuming that interactions occur randomly in groups, with all individuals potentially interacting with all other individuals at an equal rate. However, it is well known that pairs of individuals vary in their degree of contact. Here, we propose a measure to account for such heterogeneity: effective network size (ENS), which refers to the size of a maximally complete network (i.e., unstructured, where all individuals interact with all others equally) that corresponds to the outbreak characteristics of a given heterogeneous, structured network. We simulated susceptible-infected (SI) and susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) models on maximally complete networks to produce idealized outbreak duration distributions for a disease on a network of a given size. We also simulated the transmission of these same diseases on random structured networks and then used the resulting outbreak duration distributions to predict the ENS for the group or population. We provide the methods to reproduce these analyses in a public R package, “enss.” Outbreak durations of simulations on randomly structured networks were more variable than those on complete networks, but tended to have similar mean durations of disease spread. We then applied our novel metric to empirical primate networks taken from the literature and compared the information represented by our ENSs to that by other established social network metrics. In AICc model comparison frameworks, group size and mean distance proved to be the metrics most consistently associated with ENS for SI simulations, while group size, centralization, and modularity were most consistently associated with ENS for SIR simulations. In all cases, ENS was shown to be associated with at least two other independent metrics, supporting its use as a novel metric. Overall, our study provides a proof of concept for simulation-based approaches toward constructing metrics of ENS, while also revealing the conditions under which this approach is most promising.

Medium-scale dataset comparative analysis using classification accuracy for population sizes 50 and 100.

The purpose of the study: to analyse Lithuanian residents attitude towards virtual social networks, behaviour and intensity of involvement in networks. Major investigated questions: respondents were asked if they often use the internet and with who and how often when using the internet they interact with their family members, friends (people they know), colleagues (co-workers) and other people. Respondents were asked if they belong to any like-minded group, organization or community that mainly interacts via internet. After a list of different means of internet use was presented, respondents were asked how often they use internet for those purposes. Respondents who visits electronic social networks were asked which social network they visit mostly. When providing question block, respondents attitude towards electronic social networks was analysed. Further, it was analysed in what kink of activity they engage when visiting that electronic social network. It was analysed what personal information respondents publish in electronic social networks. It was questioned if they use privacy settings in electronic social networks that they visits mostly and who can see the information that respondents publishes in that social network. Socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age, duration of education, education, employment status of the respondent and his / her husband / wife / permanent partner, profession (occupation), respondent's trade union membership, religion, participation in religious rites, political views, political and social activism, voting in the last Seimas elections, nationality, household size, respondent's average and total average monthly household income, marital status, place of residence, satisfaction with quality of life, change in living conditions, received social benefits, received financial support from abroad living relatives.

Global Social Media market size is expected to reach $466.56 billion by 2029 at 13%, segmented as by type, social media advertisement, social media subscription

The dataset originated from quantitative online surveys and qualitative expert interviews with organizational actors relevant to the governance of ten Swiss wetlands from 2019 till 2021. Multi-level networks represent the wetlands governance for each of the ten cases. The collaboration networks of actors form the first level of the multi-level networks and are connected to multiple other network levels that account for the social and ecological systems those actors are active in. 521 actors relevant to the management of the ten wetlands are included in the collaboration networks; quantitative survey data exists for 71% of them. A unique feature of the collaboration networks is that it differentiates between positive and negative forms of collaboration specified based on actors' activity areas. Therefore, the data describes not only if actors collaborate but also how and where actors collaborate. Further additional two-mode networks (actor participation in forums and involvement in other regions outside the case area) are elicited in the survey and connected to the collaboration network. Finally, the dataset also contains data on ecological system interdependencies in the form of conceptual maps derived from 34 expert interviews (3-4 experts per case).

During the first quarter of 2023, internet users in Brazil spent an average of three hours and 49 minutes per day on social media. Nigeria and the Philippines also reported high usage levels. By comparison, internet users in Japan spent less than 50 minutes per day on social media. Low levels of daily usage were also recorded in South Korea and the Belgium.

As of January 2023 social network Facebook was ranked first worldwide in terms of active users with almost three billion MAU. Other popular social media include mobile messaging platforms YouTube and WhatsApp, as well as social content sharing networks such as Instagram and social video platform TikTok.

Most social networks are accessible through multiple platforms, but many popular social media started out as mobile apps, demonstrating the growing trend of mobile first development. Examples include Instagram, which initially was launched as an iOS photo editing and discovery app as well as mobile social messenger, as well as TikTok, which recorded 23.7 million downloads worldwide via the Google Play Store alone in June 2023.

Social networking does not only enable users to connect with other people but also with brands and celebrities. Social media has also become a growing source of news for internet users in many countries.

For each of 25 colonies (1 queen & 100 workers) we performed 1 week of automated tracking, extracting coordinates and orientations for each tag multiple times per second. Around each tag we annotated a head region and used overlap of head regions to infer pairwise social interactions. We quantified each individuals space-use (in particular time distribution between nest and foraging boxes)

TikTok comes in 6th position in a list of the world’s most-used social media sites today.

A collection of 35 brain maps. Each brain map is a 3D array of values representing properties of the brain at different locations.

Collection description

Large-scale functional networks, as identified through the coordinated activity of spatially distributed brain regions, have become central objects of study in neuroscience because of their contributions to many processing domains. Yet, it remains unclear how these domain-general networks interact with focal brain regions to coordinate thought and action. Here, we investigated how the default-mode network (DMN) and executive control network (ECN), two networks associated with goal-directed behavior, shape task performance through their coupling with other cortical regions several seconds in advance of behavior. We measured these networks’ connectivity during an adaptation of the monetary incentive delay (MID) response-time task in which human participants viewed social and nonsocial images (i.e., pictures of faces and landscapes, respectively) while brain activity was measured using fMRI. We found that participants displayed slower reaction times (RTs) subsequent to social trials relative to nonsocial trials. To examine the neural mechanisms driving this subsequent-RT effect, we integrated independent components analysis (ICA) and a network-based psychophysiological interaction (nPPI) analysis; this allowed us to investigate task-related changes in network coupling that preceded the observed trial-to-trial variation in RT. Strikingly, when subjects viewed social rewards, an area of the fusiform gyrus (FG) consistent with the functionally-defined fusiform face area (FFA) exhibited increased coupling with the ECN (relative to the DMN), and the relative magnitude of coupling tracked the slowing of RT on the following trial. These results demonstrate how large-scale, domain-general networks can interact with focal, domain-specific cortical regions to orchestrate subsequent behavior.

In January 2025, X, formerly known as Twitter, held a market share of more than 58 percent in Hong Kong's social media scene in terms of pageviews across all devices, followed by YouTube and Facebook. 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 51.6 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.

Social media addiction statistics show that over 210 million people worldwide suffer from social media addiction.