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.

As of January 2024, Instagram was slightly more popular with men than women, with men accounting for 50.6 percent of the platform’s global users. Additionally, the social media app was most popular amongst younger audiences, with almost 32 percent of users aged between 18 and 24 years.

              Instagram’s Global Audience

              As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social media platform globally, reaching two billion monthly active users (MAU). This number is projected to keep growing with no signs of slowing down, which is not a surprise as the global online social penetration rate across all regions is constantly increasing.
              As of January 2024, the country with the largest Instagram audience was India with 362.9 million users, followed by the United States with 169.7 million users.

              Who is winning over the generations?

              Even though Instagram’s audience is almost twice the size of TikTok’s on a global scale, TikTok has shown itself to be a fierce competitor, particularly amongst younger audiences. TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app globally in 2022, generating 672 million downloads. As of 2022, Generation Z in the United States spent more time on TikTok than on Instagram monthly.

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.

This dataset is structured as a graph, where nodes represent users and edges capture their interactions, including tweets, retweets, replies, and mentions. Each node provides detailed user attributes, such as unique ID, follower and following counts, and verification status, offering insights into each user's identity, role, and influence in the mental health discourse. The edges illustrate user interactions, highlighting engagement patterns and types of content that drive responses, such as tweet impressions. This interconnected structure enables sentiment analysis and public reaction studies, allowing researchers to explore engagement trends and identify the mental health topics that resonate most with users.

The dataset consists of three files: 1. Edges Data: Contains graph data essential for social network analysis, including fields for UserID (Source), UserID (Destination), Post/Tweet ID, and Date of Relationship. This file enables analysis of user connections without including tweet content, maintaining compliance with Twitter/X’s data-sharing policies. 2. Nodes Data: Offers user-specific details relevant to network analysis, including UserID, Account Creation Date, Follower and Following counts, Verified Status, and Date Joined Twitter. This file allows researchers to examine user behavior (e.g., identifying influential users or spam-like accounts) without direct reference to tweet content. 3. Twitter/X Content Data: This file contains only the raw tweet text as a single-column dataset, without associated user identifiers or metadata. By isolating the text, we ensure alignment with anonymization standards observed in similar published datasets, safeguarding user privacy in compliance with Twitter/X's data guidelines. This content is crucial for addressing the research focus on mental health discourse in social media. (References to prior Data in Brief publications involving Twitter/X data informed the dataset's structure.)

Austria - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks was 64.74% in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Austria - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Austria - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks reached a record high of 64.74% in December of 2024 and a record low of 35.28% in December of 2011.

I’ve compiled a list of the latest social media user statistics showing just how big social media has become and where it’s likely to go in the future.

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.

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

The County of San Mateo subscribes to Nextdoor, a social networking site based on where participants live: https://nextdoor.com/. This data shows participation in Nextdoor by area, posts, categories and date. No post content is shared in this dataset.

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

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.

Spain - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks was 64.70% in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Spain - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Spain - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks reached a record high of 64.70% in December of 2024 and a record low of 34.65% in December of 2011.

The County of San Mateo subscribes to Nextdoor, a social networking site based on where participants live: https://nextdoor.com/. This data shows participation in Nextdoor by area, posts, categories and date. No post content is shared in this dataset.

Ireland - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks was 74.50% in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Ireland - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Ireland - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks reached a record high of 74.50% in December of 2024 and a record low of 40.27% in December of 2011.

Sweden - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks was 73.13% in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Sweden - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks - last updated from the EUROSTAT on May of 2025. Historically, Sweden - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks reached a record high of 73.43% in December of 2023 and a record low of 53.56% in December of 2011.

The chart shows the grounds of hatred reported for reviewed posts, based on data reported by social media platforms participating in the European Commission's Code of conduct. Sexual orientation and xenophobia were the most common grounds for hatred, while religion, race and national origin were the least common grounds for hatred.

Regional use of social media has a significant effect on the male and female social media statistics.

MuMiN is a misinformation graph dataset containing rich social media data (tweets, replies, users, images, articles, hashtags), spanning 21 million tweets belonging to 26 thousand Twitter threads, each of which have been semantically linked to 13 thousand fact-checked claims across dozens of topics, events and domains, in 41 different languages, spanning more than a decade.

MuMiN fills a gap in the existing misinformation datasets in multiple ways:

By having a large amount of social media information which have been semantically linked to fact-checked claims on an individual basis. By featuring 41 languages, enabling evaluation of multilingual misinformation detection models. By featuring both tweets, articles, images, social connections and hashtags, enabling multimodal approaches to misinformation detection.

MuMiN features two node classification tasks, related to the veracity of a claim:

Claim classification: Determine the veracity of a claim, given its social network context. Tweet classification: Determine the likelihood that a social media post to be fact-checked is discussing a misleading claim, given its social network context.

To use the dataset, see the "Getting Started" guide and tutorial at the MuMiN website.

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.

Greece - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks was 68.67% in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Greece - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Greece - Individuals using the internet for participating in social networks reached a record high of 68.67% in December of 2024 and a record low of 28.06% in December of 2011.