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).

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.

The number of Reddit users in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 10.3 million users (+5.21 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Reddit user base is estimated to reach 208.12 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Reddit users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here with regards to the platform reddit, 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 and count multiple accounts by persons only once. Reddit users encompass both users that are logged in and those that are not.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 Reddit users in countries like Mexico and Canada.

How many people are on social media? Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities and in 2021, 82 percent of the population in the United States had a social networking profile, representing a two percent increase from the 80 percent usage reach in the previous year. This equals approximately 223 million U.S. social media users as of 2020. Global social media access

According to estimates, the number of worldwide social media users reached 4.2 billion in January 2021. The overall most popular social network based on active users is the American market leader Facebook. In January 2021, Facebook had some 2.74 billion accounts, followed by YouTube and WhatsApp with roughly 2.3 billion and two billion users respectively. The regions with the highest penetration of social media users are Western and Northern Europe.

Social media audiences in the United States Although knowing how many people use social media is a powerful indicator of the tremendous influence such websites and apps have in our day to day life, how people are using them and who these users are is also telling. A report on social media usage released in 2019 shows that among Americans, younger online audiences were more likely to use social networks than older generations. Social media users in the United States use different social networks for a wide range of purposes. In a February 2019 survey, Instagram was the top social network for viewing photos whereas Facebook was more popular for sharing content.

Every year billions of dollars are spent on advertising on social media in the United States. In 2022, the amount reached 66 billion U.S. dollars, and included paid advertising on social networks as well as games and applications on social media. By 2025, advertisers are expected to spend over 82 billion dollars on promoting their products on social networks. Facebook commands the lion’s share of these expenditures (more than 80 percent), followed by LinkedIn and Pinterest with four and two percent respectively. Social network advertising – a closer look   Studies show that a little over 90 percent of U.S. companies are and will be using social media for marketing purposes. In 2017, social messaging and video were thought to be the trends of the future in relation to social media advertising and believed to have the biggest effect on marketing strategies. Lo and behold, advertising spending on social video has been growing ever since, and is expected to amount to nearly 15 billion U.S dollars in 2021. Even in this respect, Facebook has the lead, especially when it comes to influencer marketing. In fact, all tiers of influencers - from microinfluencers to celebrities - post the majority of their videos on Facebook. The second choice of platform to share their videos is YouTube, which despite being 'the' video sharing platform is not as popular yet among influencers most probably due to smaller user reach.

In March 2025, Facebook accounted for 56 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. Pinterest ranked second with 16.73 percent of all U.S. social media site visits, while X (previously Twitter) accounted for 11.73 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 81 percent of Facebook users across the globe were using the platform’s social networking services exclusively via mobile phone, while only 1.5 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 1.9 million downloads, while Facebook and the instant-messaging service Messenger followed ranking third and fifth with 1,3 million and 1.03 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 151 minutes per day in 2023, with a decrease to 143 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.

"Sent private messages" and "Liked posts by other users or followed people" are the top two answers among U.S. consumers in our survey on the subject of "Most common social media activities".The survey was conducted online among 60,869 respondents in the United States, in 2024.

Despite a tumultuous 2018, Facebook is still the top social network in the United States, with 169.76 million mobile users accessing the Facebook app in September 2019. The company’s other properties Instagram and Facebook Messenger ranked second and third with 121 and 106 million users respectively. Cambridge Analytica scandal 2018 The biggest social media company in the world had a difficult 2018. The platform has long been accused of enabling the spread of fake news during the 2016 election and beyond. One of the first and biggest negative Facebook stories of 2018 was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which unfolded from March 2018. The Guardian, The Observer, and The New York Times simultaneously reported on political data firm Cambridge Analytica harvesting data of millions of Facebook users worldwide without their knowledge before the 2016 election, which led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having to testify before Congress in April 2018. Facebook usage behavior changes Due to the revelations about Facebook and the company’s treatment of private user data, many U.S. users are planning to use the social network much less and to be much more careful about what they post . During an April 2018 survey, only 20 percent of respondents stated that their Facebook usage has not changed, and they were planning on continuing to use the social platform as much as they always had in the past.

As of the third quarter of 2024, the most popular reason for using social media according to users in the United States was to keep in touch with family and friends, with almost 59 percent of respondents choosing this as their leading reason. Overall, 38.9 percent of internet users in the U.S. said that they used social media to fill their spare time, and 29.4 percent said they used it to find content. Live streams, following sports, and making new contacts were other popular reasons for using social networks.

According to a 2023 survey of adults in the United States, most respondents expressed concern regarding social media companies data collection practices. About 35 percent of respondents were very concerned about how social media platforms collect their personal data, while 44 percent were somewhat concerned. In contrast, only 17 percent of respondents were not very concerned, and a mere four percent of respondents were not at all concerned about their personal data being collected by these companies.

The social media penetration rate in the United States was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 4.2 (+4.59 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the penetration rate is estimated to reach 95.71 and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the social media penetration rate of was continuously increasing over the past years.

In 2023, younger consumers were the most likely to buy a product they had seen on a social media platform. According to the survey, almost 70 percent of Gen Z and over nine out of ten millennial shoppers in the United States purchased an item they had previously seen on their social media feed.

In 2024, social media advertising spending in the United States amounted to 83 billion U.S. dollars, out of nearly 361 billion total online media advertising spending forecast for that year.

Social media is one of the go-to news sources in the United States – over one third of U.S. adults responding to a 2022 survey got their news from social media platforms every day, and a further 22 percent did so a few times or at least once per week. After the surge in social media news consumption in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, daily engagement fell in 2021, but the increase the following year suggests that daily news access on social networks could continue to grow in years to come.

The most popular social sites for news

An annual report surveying U.S. adults from 2019 to 2022 revealed that Facebook was the most popular social network used for news, followed by YouTube. Important to note here though is that TikTok was not included in the survey question for those years, a platform increasingly popular with younger generations. Whilst the share of adults regularly using TikTok for news aged 50 years or above was just five percent, among those aged between 18 and 29 years the figure was over five times higher.

Meanwhile, Twitter is journalists’ preferred social media site, with the share who use Twitter for their job at almost 70 percent. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter however, some journalists raised concerns about the future of free speech on the platform.

Gen Z and social media news consumption

A 2022 survey found that half of all Gen Z respondents used social media for news every day. Gen Z is driving growth in social media news usage, a trend which will continue if the younger consumers belonging to this generation increase their engagement with news as they age.

When it comes to the most well-known social networks in the United States, YouTube and Facebook are leading the pack with a brand awareness of 96 and 95 percent respectively, among internet users. For this study, brand awareness was surveyed employing the concept of aided brand recognition, showing respondents both the brand's logo and the written brand name.

As of Q3 2020, 34 percent of the respondents in the Unites states thought that social media had a positive impact on their social lives, compared to 17 percent who thought otherwise. The majority of respondents stated social media had no impact on their social lives.

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.

In 2022, YouTube was the most used online platform by teens in the United States, with 89.4 percent of respondents reporting using the platform at least once per month. Overall, TikTok was the second most used social media platform by teens in the U.S., with over 66 percent of respondents using the service. By 2026, it is estimated that 73 percent of teens in the U.S. will be using the popular video app.

As of January 2025, 78 percent of social media users in the United States aged 40 to 49 years were users of Facebook, as were 75 percent of 30 to 39 year olds in the country. Overall, 66 percent of those aged 18 to 29 years were using Instagram in the U.S. The social media market in the United States The number of social media users in the United States has shown continuous growth in the past years, and it is forecast to continue increasing to reach 342 million users in 2029. As of 2023, the social network user penetration in the United States amounted to an impressive 91.56 percent, meaning that more than nine in ten people in the country engaged with online platforms. Furthermore, Facebook was by far the most popular social media platform in the United States, accounting for 45 percent of all social media visits in 2023, followed by Pinterest with 21.2 percent of visits. The global social media landscape As of April 2024, 5.07 billion people were social media users, accounting for 62.6 percent of the world’s population. Northern Europe was the region with the highest social media penetration rate with a reach of 80.2 percent, followed by Western Europe with 78.2 percent and Eastern Asia 74.9 percent. In contrast, less than one in ten people in Middle Africa used social networks. Facebook’s popularity is not limited to the United States: this network leads the market on a global scale, and it accumulated more than three billion monthly active users (MAU) as of 2024, which is far more any other social media platform. 272014 YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp followed, all with two billion or more MAU.

As of early 2025, advertising on LinkedIn had the highest reach in the United States among the presented social networks, with **** percent. YouTube and Facebook followed, with **** and **** percent, respectively.