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.

Over the five years through 2025-26, industry revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 20.3% to reach £12.5 billion. Social media platforms are integral to people's lives, offering ways to communicate, create and view content and share information. According to Ofcom, approximately 89% of UK internet users in 2023 used social media apps or sites. Teenagers and young adults are the biggest users. Advertising is the primary revenue source for social media platforms, although subscription-based services are gaining momentum as platforms seek to diversify their incomes. TikTok is the success story of the past five years, becoming the most downloaded app between 2020 and 2022, according to Apptopia. The short-form video platform has over 30 million monthly users in the UK in 2025. After Musk's takeover, X, formerly known as Twitter, adjusted its content moderation and allowed previously banned accounts to return. As a result, over 600 advertisers pulled their ads from the site because of fears their brand may be associated with malcontent. In response to falling ad revenue, X has introduced a subscription-based service which enables users to verify themselves and boosts the number of people who view their tweets. Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram have responded by introducing a similar service. In 2025, more social media platforms are using AI to boost user engagement. This improves click-through rates and drives higher advertising revenue. Industry revenue is expected to grow by 6.3% in 2025-26. Over the five years through 2030-31, social media platforms' revenue is projected to climb at an estimated 9.2% to reach £19.4 billion. Regulations relating to how data is collected, stored, and shared will force advertisers and platforms to rethink how they can target their desired demographics. The tightening of regulations will raise industry compliance costs, weighing on profit margin. Older age groups present a new revenue opportunity for social media platforms if they can bridge the gap between passive TV consumption and interactive digital engagement. Augmented Reality (AR) technology will move beyond filters to become standard for immersive product trials, interactive ads, and virtual meetups

Survey data collected in Canada, 2019. n = 1539. Using, Age, Facebook use and meme understanding to determine differences between demographics in relation to Instagram use

As of July 2025, around *****percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 25 and 34 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 2023, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, following TikTok and Snapchat. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens reported feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media and less lonely, depressed, and anxious. However, social media can also have negative effects on teens, which can be much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that ** percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported having experienced cyberbullying when using social media, while in comparison only **** 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.

Snapchat has a reach into 75% of the millenial and Gen Z audience.

The average Twitter user spends 5.1 hours per month on the platform.

YouTube gets an average of 14.3 billion total worldwide visits every month.

Users spend an average of 19.6 hours per month on TikTok alone. This works out to be approximately 39 minutes per day.

This dataset provides a comprehensive and diverse snapshot of social media users and their engagements across various popular platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Spotify. With 100 rows of anonymized data, it offers valuable insights into the dynamic world of social media usage. 😀

Each row in the dataset represents a unique user with a designated User ID and Username to ensure anonymity. Alongside user-specific details, the dataset captures essential information, including the platform being used, the post's content, timestamp, and media type (text, image, or video). Additionally, it tracks engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares/retweets, and user interactions, providing an overview of the user's popularity and social impact. 💬

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The dataset also includes pertinent user attributes, such as account creation date, privacy settings, number of followers, and following. The users' profiles are further enriched with demographic characteristics, including anonymized representations of their age group and gender. 🗨️

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Hashtags, mentions, media URLs, post URLs, and self-reported location contribute to understanding user interests, content themes, and geographic distribution. Moreover, users' bios and language preferences offer insights into their passions, activities, and linguistic communication on the platforms.

This dataset provides a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing the credibility of information on social media among Iranian users. The research focuses on identifying the most significant factors that affect the perceived credibility of information shared on various social media platforms. The dataset includes demographic information, social media usage patterns, and ratings of various attributes related to information credibility.

Key Features

• Demographic Data: Includes age, gender, education level, study field, and university.
• Social Media Usage: Details on the number of social media memberships, active platforms, and average hours spent per day.
• Credibility Factors: Ratings on various attributes such as source trustworthiness, media structure, message accuracy, and more.
• Comprehensive Coverage: Covers multiple dimensions of social media usage and information credibility.
• User-Centric Insights: Provides insights into how users perceive and interact with information on social media.

Potential Uses

• Academic Research: Investigate the factors that influence information credibility on social media.
• Social Media Analysis: Understand user behavior and preferences on social media platforms.
• Policy Development: Inform policies related to information dissemination and credibility on social media.
• Marketing and Advertising: Tailor content strategies based on user perceptions of credibility.
• User Experience Design: Improve the design and functionality of social media platforms to enhance information credibility.

# 🌍 Global Social Media Demographics by Age & Gender (2025)

This dataset provides estimated global usage demographics for major social media platforms, differentiated by age and gender for early to mid-2025.

Ideal for market analysis, user behavior insights, and demographic visualization. Data compiled from public sources with AI assistance.

Snapchat now boasts over 319 million daily active users. That means it’s one of the most engaging platforms. Snapchat currently has a total user base of 800 million.

The Demographic Reports are produced by the Economic, Demographic and Statistical Research unit within the Countywide Service Integration and Planning Management (CSIPM) Division of the Fairfax County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services. Information produced by the Economic, Demographic and Statistical Research unit is used by every county department, board, authority and the Fairfax County Public Schools.

Time-Wasters on Social Media Dataset Overview The "Time-Wasters on Social Media" dataset offers a detailed look into user behavior and engagement with social media platforms. It captures various attributes that can help analyze the impact of social media on users' time and productivity. This dataset is valuable for researchers, marketers, and social scientists aiming to understand the nuances of social media consumption.

This dataset was generated using synthetic data techniques with the help of NumPy and pandas. The data is artificially created to simulate real-world social media usage patterns for research and analysis purposes.

Columns Description UserID: A unique identifier assigned to each user. Age: The age of the user. Gender: The gender of the user. Location: The geographical location of the user. Income: The annual income of the user. Debt: Tells If the is in Debt or Not. Owns Property: Indicates whether the user owns any property (Yes/No). Profession: The profession or job title of the user. Demographics: Additional demographic information about the user (Rural or Urban Life). Platform: The social media platform used by the user (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, TikTok). Total Time Spent: The total time the user has spent on the platform. Number of Sessions: The number of sessions the user has had on the platform. Video ID: A unique identifier for each video watched. Video Category: The category of the video watched (e.g., Entertainment, Gaming, Pranks, Vlog). Video Length: The length of the video watched. Engagement: The engagement level of the user with the video (e.g., Likes, Comments). Importance Score: A score representing the perceived importance of the video to the user. Time Spent On Video: The amount of time the user spent watching the video. Number of Videos Watched: The total number of videos watched by the user. Scroll Rate: The rate at which the user scrolls through content. Frequency: How frequently the user logs into the platform. Productivity Loss: The amount of productivity lost due to time spent on social media. Satisfaction: The satisfaction level of the user with the content consumed. Watch Reason: The reason why the user watched the video (e.g., Entertainment, Information). DeviceType: The type of device used to access the platform (e.g., Mobile, Desktop). OS: The operating system of the device used. Watch Time: The specific time of day when the user watched the video. Self Control: The user's self-assessed level of self-control while using the platform. Addiction Level: The user's self-assessed level of addiction to social media. Current Activity: The activity the user was engaged in before using the platform. ConnectionType: The type of internet connection used by the user (e.g., Wi-Fi, Mobile Data).

Usage This dataset can be utilized to:

Analyze patterns in social media usage. Understand demographic differences in platform engagement. Examine the impact of social media on productivity. Develop strategies to improve user engagement and satisfaction. Study the correlation between social media usage and various demographic factors.

Impact of Social Media on Suicide Rates: Produced Results

Overview

This dataset explores the impact of social media usage on suicide rates, presenting an analysis based on social media platform data and WHO suicide rate statistics. It is an insightful resource for researchers, data scientists, and analysts looking to understand the correlation between increased social media activity and suicide rates across different regions and demographics.

Content

The dataset includes the following key sources:

WHO Suicide Rate Data (SDGSUICIDE): Retrieved from WHO data export, which tracks global suicide rates. Social Media Usage Data: Information from major social media platforms, sourced from Kaggle, supplemented with data from:

Facebook: Statista

Twitter: Twitter Investor Relations

Instagram: Facebook Investor Relations

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge:

World Health Organization (WHO): For providing global suicide rate data, accessible under their data policy (WHO Data Policy). Kaggle Dataset Contributors: For social media usage data that played a crucial role in the analysis.

Usage

This dataset is useful for studying the potential social factors contributing to suicide rates, especially the role of social media. Analysts can explore correlations using time-series analysis, regression models, or other statistical tools to derive meaningful insights. Please ensure compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Data Files

Impact-of-social-media-on-suicide-rates-results-1.1.0.zip (90.9 kB) Contains processed results and supplementary data.

Citations

If you use this dataset in your work, please cite:

Martin Winkler. (2021). Impact of social media on suicide rates: produced results (1.1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4701587 https://zenodo.org/records/4701587

License

This dataset is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. You are free to share and adapt the material, provided proper attribution is given, it's not used for commercial purposes, and any derivatives are distributed under the same license.

Columns

Year: The year of the recorded data. Sex: Demographic indicator (e.g., male, female). Suicide Rate % Change Since 2010: Percentage change in suicide rates compared to the year 2010. Twitter User Count % Change Since 2010: Percentage change in Twitter user counts compared to the year 2010. Facebook User Count % Change Since 2010: Percentage change in Facebook user counts compared to the year 2010.

Data Bins

The dataset includes categorized data ranges, allowing for analysis of trends within specified intervals. For example, ranges for suicide rates, Twitter user counts, and Facebook user counts are represented in bins for better granularity.

Count Summary

The dataset summarizes counts for various intervals, enabling researchers to identify trends and patterns over time, highlighting periods of significant change or stability in both suicide rates and social media usage.

Use Cases

This dataset can be used for:

Statistical analysis to understand correlations between social media usage and mental health outcomes. Academic research focused on public health, psychology, or sociology. Policy-making discussions aimed at addressing mental health concerns linked to social media.

Cautions

The dataset contains sensitive information regarding suicide rates. Users should handle this data with care and sensitivity, considering ethical implications when presenting findings.

Data associated with the paper: Who Tweets with Their Location? Understanding the Relationship Between Demographic Characteristics and the Use of Geoservices and Geotagging on Twitter Luke Sloan & Jeffrey Morgan

This social media content dataset is simulate realistic influencer posts across multiple popular platforms, reflecting diverse content types, sponsorship details, audience demographics, and engagement metrics. The dataset contains over 52,000 rows representing individual content posts generated over the past two years. It includes a balanced distribution of sponsored and non-sponsored content, with detailed disclosure information to support transparency studies and analyses. The variety of platforms, languages, content categories, and audience demographics makes this dataset ideal for exploring influencer marketing dynamics, content performance analytics, disclosure practices, and audience segmentation in social media research.

Dataset Features

id: Unique identifier for each content post (starting from 1).

platform: The social media platform where the content was posted. Values: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Bilibili, RedNote.

content_id: Unique ID for each content piece (e.g., content_0, content_1, …).

creator_id: Unique identifier for the content creator, cycling through 5000 distinct creators.

creator_name: Username of the content creator.

content_url: URL pointing to the content.

content_type: Format of the content. Values: video, image, text, mixed.

content_category: The main theme or niche of the content. Values: beauty, lifestyle, tech.

post_date: Timestamp of the post, randomly distributed over the past two years.

language: Language of the content, with probabilities favoring English. Values: English, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Japanese.

content_length: Length of the content in seconds (for video) or word count (for text), varying by content type.

content_description: Textual description or caption of the content.

hashtags: A comma-separated string of hashtags used in the post (0 to 5 tags).

views: Number of views (simulated via a Poisson distribution).

likes: Number of likes received.

shares: Number of shares.

comments_count: Count of comments on the post.

comments_text: Aggregated text of comments (0 to 5 comments concatenated).

follower_count: Number of followers the creator had at the time of posting.

is_sponsored: Boolean indicating whether the post is sponsored.

disclosure_type: Disclosure type regarding sponsorship for sponsored posts. Values: explicit, implicit, none (non-sponsored always 'none').

sponsor_name: Name of the sponsoring company if sponsored, else 'Not sponsors'.

sponsor_category: Sponsorship industry category. Values: cosmetics, electronics, fashion, food, gaming, travel or 'Not sponsors'.

disclosure_location: Where sponsorship disclosure appears in the post. Values: video, caption, hashtags, none (non-sponsored always 'none').

audience_age_distribution: Predominant age group of the audience. Values: 13-18, 19-25, 26-35, 36-50, 50+.

audience_gender_distribution: Predominant gender of the audience. Values: male, female, non-binary, unknown.

audience_location: Primary geographic location of the audience. Values: USA, China, India, Japan, Brazil, Germany, UK, Russia.

Demographic data prediction is powered by Demografy AI that extracts demographic data from names with 100% coverage, accuracy preview before purchase and GDPR-compliance.

Demografy is a privacy by design customer demographics prediction AI platform.

Use cases: - Social Media analytics and user segmentation - Competitor analysis - Actionable analytics about your customers to get demographic insights - Appending missing demographic data to your records for customer segmentation and targeted marketing campaigns - Enhanced personalization knowing you customer better

Core features: - Demographic segmentation - Demographic analytics - API integration - Data export

Key advantages: - 100% coverage of lists - Accuracy estimate before purchase - GDPR-compliance as no sensitive data is required. Demografy can work with only first names or masked last names

Unlike traditional solutions, you don’t need to know and disclose your customer or prospect addresses, emails or other sensitive information. You need only names of social media users. This makes Demografy privacy by design and enables you to get 100% coverage of your audience since all you need to know is names.

This dataset contains simulated data for social media users' demographics, behaviors, and perceptions related to political content. It includes features such as age, gender, education level, occupation, social media usage frequency, exposure to political content, and perceptions of accuracy and relevance.

the features included in the "Social Media Political Content Analysis Dataset":

1. Age: Age of the user.
2. Gender: Gender identity of the user.
3. Education Level: Highest level of education attained by the user.
4. Occupation: Current occupation of the user.
5. Political Affiliation: Political leaning or affiliation of the user (e.g., Liberal, Conservative, Independent).
6. Geographic Location: Country or region where the user is located (e.g., USA, UK, Canada, Australia).
7. Social Media Usage Frequency: Frequency of social media usage by the user (e.g., 0-1 hour, 1-2 hours, 2-4 hours, 4+ hours).
8. Preferred Social Media: Social media platform preferred by the user (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
9. Political Content Exposure: Frequency of exposure to political content on social media (e.g., Once a day, Few times a week, Rarely, Several times a day).
10. Types of Political Content: Types of political content consumed by the user (e.g., News articles, Opinion pieces, Memes).
11. Sources of Political Content: Sources from which the user obtains political content (e.g., Mainstream media, Political parties, Independent bloggers).
12. Recency of Exposure: Recency of the user's exposure to political content (e.g., Within the last hour, Within the last 24 hours, Within the last week, Longer than a week ago).
13. Interactions Frequency: Frequency of user interactions with political content on social media (e.g., Once a day, Few times a week, Rarely, Several times a day).
14. Political Content Topics: Topics of political content that interest the user (e.g., Economy, Healthcare, Immigration, Environment).
15. Perception of Accuracy: User's perception of the accuracy of political content on social media (e.g., Very accurate, Somewhat accurate, Not accurate).
16. Awareness of Algorithms: Whether the user is aware of algorithms that determine their social media feed (e.g., Yes, No).
17. Perception of Relevance: User's perception of the relevance of political content on social media (e.g., Very relevant, Somewhat relevant, Not relevant).
18. Personal Impact: User's perception of the personal impact of political content on social media (e.g., Strong impact, Moderate impact, No impact).
19. Trust in Social Media: User's level of trust in social media as a source of political information (e.g., Trust a lot, Trust somewhat, Do not trust).
20. Concerns about Algorithms: User's level of concern about algorithms shaping their social media experience (e.g., Very concerned, Somewhat concerned, Not concerned).
21. Overall Quality of Discourse: User's perception of the overall quality of political discourse on social media (e.g., High quality, Moderate quality, Low quality).
22. Views on Influence: User's perception of the influence of political content on social media (e.g., Very influential, Somewhat influential, Not influential).
23. Suggestions for Improvement: User's suggestions for improving the quality or experience of political content on social media (e.g., Increase transparency, Provide more diverse sources, Improve fact-checking, Enhance user controls).

The number of social media users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 26 million users (+8.55 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the social media user base is estimated to reach 330.07 million users and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the number of social media users of was continuously increasing over the past years.The shown figures regarding social media users have been derived from survey data that has been processed to estimate missing demographics.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).