In 2021, messaging and video sharing platform Snapchat was more popular than TikTok among Gen Z users in the United States. TikTok counted around 37 million users who were born between 1997 and 2012, while Instagram reported around 33 million users in the same period. Snapchat, which counted 42 million Gen Z users, is projected to reach 49.5 million users in the examined demographic by 2025. Overall, platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter and Reddit had significantly less users amongst this age group.

As of 2020, ******** was the most popular social media platform among Gen Z and Millennials in the United States to connect to others. ****** and ******* ranked second and third, with respective shares of ** percent and ** percent of respondents using these social networks to connect to others.

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.

The share of individuals who used Snapchat daily in Sweden amounted to ** percent as of the third quarter of 2020. In contrast, those who sometimes used the app were ** percent that year. Overall, Snapchat became more and more used over the years. The users’ percentage grew from ** percent in 2015 to ** percent in Q3 2020. Regarding the age of the users , the majority of respondents who were in the age group between 12 and 25 years used the app. Respondents aged between 16 and 25 who used Snapchat were ** percent and next in the ranking were people aged between 26 and 35, where ** percent of whom were users of the platform in Q3 2020.

Why Snapchat?    

A survey conducted in 2019 investigated the purposes of Snapchat usage in Sweden that year. The most common reason was to keep contact with friends and family and was picked by nearly ** percent of the respondents. Second in the ranking was entertainment purpose, picked by ** percent of the respondents.

Social media in Sweden     

The share of individuals who were using social networks in Sweden grew from ** percent in 2011 to ** percent in 2019. The percentage of users within the past three months peaked in 2017, when it reached ** percent of individuals .

Launched in 2004, Facebook has been a global leader within the social networks. Sweden made no exception and Facebook was the leading social media platform in the country in 2020, followed by Instagram and Snapchat. ** percent of the surveyed internet users in Sweden stated to be using Facebook. Moreover, the majority of the users were going on Facebook several times a day the same year. Nearly all users were going on Facebook at least monthly.

Who is on Facebook?

Within the Nordic countries, Facebook was slightly more popular among women than men in 2020. Norway was an exception to this, with an equal distribution of male and female audience. By contrast, on a global scale, Facebook usage seemed to be more common among men than women.

Social media in the Nordics

Iceland topped the ranking of active social media users in the Nordic countries in 2020. The data was based on the monthly active users reported by the most active social media platform in each country. Finland was the country with the lowest share of active social media users in the region.

Snapchat was used mostly by young people of ages between 16 and 25 (91 percent of respondents) at the end of 2020 in Sweden. Furthermore, 58 percent of people aged between 26 and 35 used the platform that year. While 21 percent of the people interviewed used the app at least sometimes in 2015, this percentage grew to 42 in 2020. 22 percent of respondents used the platform on a daily basis. Snapchat use among those aged 26 and above however had increased in 2020.

 Snapchat wirldwide    

A survey conducted in 2018 found that there were over 260 million Snapchat users worldwide. It also presented a forecast for Snapchat usage up until 2022. In fact, over 356 million people were expected to use the app.

 Social Media in Sweden     

The overall usage of social media in Sweden grew significantly between 2010 and 2929. To be precise, 53 percent of people in 2010 and 89 percent of people in 2020reported to have used social media. Compared to other social media platforms, Snapchat stands third in the ranking. Following Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat was used by 42 percent of internet users in Sweden in 2020. Facebook ranked first on the daily social media usage list as well, with 61 percent of daily users in 2019, while Snapchat had 25 percent of daily users that year.

WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube ranked as the most popular social media for Dutch Millennials or 20-to-39-year-olds in 2020, beating, for example, Instagram. In 2020, roughly 90 percent of the Millennial respondents in the Netherlands said they used WhatsApp. Facebook was also popular, with 82 percent indicating they actively used this platform. Both social networks had over ten million users in the country, of which 9.1 million were daily users for WhatsApp and 6.8 million for Facebook.

Millennials are less active on Facebook

Despite that Facebook ranks as the second-most popular social media platform, the Silicon Valley application experienced upheaval in the Netherlands. In a different question asked by the source, 57 percent of the Millennials agreed with a statement that said they spent less time on Facebook than they used to. Privacy concerns were one possible explanation for this. Some respondents also mentioned, though, that the platform had become too time-consuming and would rather spend it on “real life” activities.

Instagram and Snapchat a gateway to Generation Z, not Millennials

Are Dutch Millennials leaving Facebook then for other social networks, such as Instagram or Snapchat? The ranking provided here does to indicate that the 23-to-37-year-olds are part of the user base of the two photo apps. Data looking at the growing penetration rate of the two platforms by different age groups in the Netherlands confirms this. This same data does mention, though, that consumers aged 15-19 used the apps a lot more. Between 2015 and 2018, Instagram’s penetration rate among Generation Z increased by roughly 25 percentage points whilst the youngest generation was the first in the Netherlands to use Snapchat.

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.

As of the first quarter of 2025, photo and video sharing app Snapchat had 460 million daily active users worldwide, up from 460 million global DAU in the fourth quarter of 2024. The app has seen steady increases in daily active users since the beginning of 2019. Snapchat is relevant for teenagers Originally launched in 2011, Snapchat has become one of the most popular social messaging and photo sharing apps worldwide; making its CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel one of the world’s richest social media entrepreneurs. With almost 800 million active users as of April 2024, Snapchat easily ranks among the most popular social networks worldwide. According to U.S. teenagers in fall 2023, Snapchat is the second most important social network of their generation, ahead of photo sharing competitor Instagram and other networks such as Twitter or Facebook. Overall, 48 percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years were reportedly using Snapchat, the highest usage reach among any age group. When it comes to user satisfaction with social media, Snapchat’s performance is fair to middling. According to recent survey data, the social app scored 72 out of 100 points on a consumer satisfaction scale, ranking ahead of Twitter and Facebook but behind Pinterest and eternal rival Instagram.

As of April 2024, around 16.5 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide was aged 34 years or younger.

              Teens and social media

              As one of the biggest social networks worldwide, Instagram is especially popular with teenagers. As of fall 2020, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens report feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious.
              Social media can have negative effects on teens, which is also much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that 35 percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported to have experienced cyber bullying when using social media, while in comparison only five percent of teenagers with high social-emotional well-being stated the same. As such, social media can have a big impact on already fragile states of mind.

As of the third quarter of 2020, 48 percent of U.S. internet users aged 15 to 25 years used photo sharing app Snapchat. Snapchat usage in the United States Since spring 2016, Snapchat consistently ranks as the most important social network for teenagers in the United States. In spring 2019, 41 percent of teenage survey respondents stated that the photo messaging app was their preferred social network. However, the popularity of Snapchat among its key user demographic is in decline and this also holds true for the general Snapchat audience in the United States. In 2018, 79.7 million U.S. users accessed the photo messaging app to communicate. This figure is projected to decrease to 78.1 million users in 2023. As of March 2019, Snapchat had a 26.3 percent mobile audience reach in the United States, ranking behind several competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. In terms of monthly user engagement, Snapchat still ranked ahead of eternal rival Instagram but was trailing digital juggernaut Facebook and rapidly trending video sharing app TikTok.

This statistic shows a ranking of the estimated number of Snapchat users in 2020 in Africa, differentiated by country. The user numbers have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average daily active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.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 more than *** countries and regions worldwide. All input data are sourced from international institutions, national statistical offices, and trade associations. All data has been are processed to generate comparable datasets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

******** was the most popular social media platform for Gen Z, or 15-to-19-year-olds, in the Netherlands in 2020, with nearly all respondents using the service. This according to domestic survey information. The ********* service already ranked as the Netherlands' overall most popular social medium in terms of users. YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat were also very popular, all reaching a penetration rate of over ** percent. Karaoke app TikTok, on the other hand, was much less popular, as only ** percent of them used the video application. Why is TikTok low in this ranking? Chinese video and sing-along application TikTok, formerly Musical.ly, made a global name as being one of the most popular smartphone apps for Generation Z. Here, it seemingly ranks low as the source used ages ** and up. This age group might potentially fall outside TikTok’s user base. While there is no data for the Netherlands that investigates the age groups below **, download numbers suggest the app grew in popularity in the Netherlands after Bytedance (TikTok’s owner) merged Musical.ly and TikTok in August 2018. A clash of generations Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gen Z uses Instagram and Snapchat much more often than their Millennial counterparts (defined by the source as 20-to 39-year olds). Interestingly, Pinterest was also more popular among the younger generation. The picture gallery app does not rank among the most popular apps in the Netherlands, reaching less than **** million people in 2019. Facebook, on the other hand, was more preferred by Millennials than it was by Generation Z.

As of April 2025, India had the biggest Snapchat user base in the world, with an audience of 210 million users. The United States ranked in second place with a Snapchat audience base of over 105 million users. Snapchat’s popularity Being one of the most popular social networks worldwide and especially liked by younger online audiences, Snapchat is an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. According to industry estimates, Snapchat’s 2019 advertising revenue is forecast to amount to over 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, up from 1.53 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Snapchat is a mobile-first social network, with the majority of visits generated via mobile phones. According to U.S. Snapchat users, the main reason for using the platform was to keep in contact with friends and family. Snapchat’s vanishing photo sharing function has popularized the sharing of everyday photos in a story stream, a setup that has since also been adopted by other photo and messaging apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Despite the competition, Snapchat users are among the most engaged – a total of 48 percent of U.S. Snapchat users post content to the app on a weekly basis. Only WhatsApp and Facebook can boast a more active audience.

As of April 2024, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years, and 30.6 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16 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 362.9 million and 169.7 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 second quarter of 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users.

As many popular social media applications such as Instagram and Facebook have already introduced shopping features on their platforms as of 2020, the source has gathered the usage share for the main platforms used for shopping by French consumers in 2020. Facebook, being the first network to have introduced the shopping function among the three in the ranking, came in first with 76 percent of respondents having made a purchase through it. Instagram ranked in second with about 25 percent, followed by Snapchat with around 10 percent.

Although Brazil’s population was nearly 65% larger than Mexico’s, the latter was home to approximately 50 percent more Snapchat users than the South American country. As of January 2021, there were 17.95 million users of this multimedia messaging app in Mexico. This was followed by Brazil and Colombia with 11.95 million and 6.05 million Snapchat users, respectively.

Snapchat is more popular among young Mexicans According to another source, the number of Snapchat users in Mexico can be significantly lower, but it had an estimated 17 percent growth between 2018 and 2021. The app was particularly popular among young adults. As of August 2019, more than one out of ten mobile phone users aged between 18 and 24 years in Mexico were on Snapchat.

TikTok time in Latin America The region also saw this Beijing-based app as an increasing trend in 2020. In January of that year, Brazil alone concentrated over 10 percent of all TikTok installs worldwide. The mobile app turned into a major online platform for celebrities, with four of them making into the top six most followed TikTok accounts in Brazil as of August 2020. Concurrently, the number of unique visitors to TikTok in Mexico increased by 226 percent between January and July 2020.

Cristiano Ronaldo has one of the most popular Instagram accounts as of April 2024.

              The Portuguese footballer is the most-followed person on the photo sharing app platform with 628 million followers. Instagram's own account was ranked first with roughly 672 million followers.

              How popular is Instagram?

              Instagram is a photo-sharing social networking service that enables users to take pictures and edit them with filters. The platform allows users to post and share their images online and directly with their friends and followers on the social network. The cross-platform app reached one billion monthly active users in mid-2018. In 2020, there were over 114 million Instagram users in the United States and experts project this figure to surpass 127 million users in 2023.

              Who uses Instagram?

              Instagram audiences are predominantly young – recent data states that almost 60 percent of U.S. Instagram users are aged 34 years or younger. Fall 2020 data reveals that Instagram is also one of the most popular social media for teens and one of the social networks with the biggest reach among teens in the United States.

              Celebrity influencers on Instagram
              Many celebrities and athletes are brand spokespeople and generate additional income with social media advertising and sponsored content. Unsurprisingly, Ronaldo ranked first again, as the average media value of one of his Instagram posts was 985,441 U.S. dollars.

This statistic gives information on the most popular social media sites used by teenage and young adult internet users in the United States as of the third quarter of 2020. During the survey period, it was found that ** percent of responding internet users aged 15 to 25 years used social photo sharing app Instagram.

Despite Snapchat's dominance, Facebook continues to be the more widely used social networking site used by teenagers and young adults7. A total of ** percent of respondents currently use Facebook, compared to ** percent of respondents who stated that they used Snapchat. Yet when teens, whose average age was **, rated their most important social network, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter where given more important ratings than Facebook. These social networks are being increasingly visited via mobile devices.

In 2022, ******* was the most used social platform among children and teenagers in the United Kingdom, with ** percent of respondents stating that they had used the service. ******** ranked second, with ** percent of kids and teens in the UK being active on the platform. Additionally, usage of TikTok and Snapchat increased from 2021 to 2021 among those aged three to 17 in the UK. Youth accounts on the rise again From ** percent in 2012, the share of children aged 12 to 15 years of age with a social media account fell to ** percent in 2018, but increased again in 2020, peaking at ** percent. Despite some major social networks setting minimum age limits in their terms of service, ** percent of children aged 5 to 7 years had a social media account in 2020, according to Ofcom. Facebook falling out of favor with teens Among teens and young adults in the United States, Youtube and Instagram had a higher reach than any other social network, slightly ahead of Facebook and Snapchat. When you remove young adults from the picture, Snapchat is clearly the most important social network and Facebook barely comes into the equation. Since the Fall/Autumn period of 2017, less than ten percent of teens in the United States said Facebook was their most important social network, compared with more than ** percent of teens who nominated Snapchat. The new hot trend among Gen Z is TikTok, selected by ** percent of respondents and ranking second.