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, Messenger, and Instagram . 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, 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 2026, social networking sites are estimated to reach 5.75 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.

A line chart that shows % of U.S. adults who say they ever use …

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.

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

This dataset provides detailed rankings and key metrics for 100+ social media platforms and sites in 2025. It includes information such as user base, popularity trends, and global reach. Ideal for analyzing social media growth, user engagement, and market trends. Whether you're a data scientist, marketer, or researcher, this dataset offers valuable insights into the evolving digital landscape.

Social Media has become a part of our day-to-day routine, keeping users from across the world well-connected through digital platforms. With each passing year, social media is evolving at a rapid speed. With each passing year, the number of social media users is increasing at an immersive speed. Reports also suggest the number of social media users will reach a milestone of 5.85 billion in 2027.

In 2024, 62.6% of the world’s population will access social media, which clearly indicates the dominance of social media platforms in today’s world. In this article, we will examine social media statistics for 2024, uncovering monthly active users, daily time spent by users, most downloaded social media apps, etc.

How many people use social media? Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2025, over *** billion people were estimated to be using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over *** billion in 2030. 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 ** percent. This figure is anticipated to grow as less 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. The mobile-first market of 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 *** minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of ** 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 *** billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately *** 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.

Between 2019, and 2024, global social media advertising spending skyrocketed by 140%, surpassing an estimated $230 billion in the latter year.

This statistic presents the social network membership reach among the online population in the United States. During the February 2017 survey, 27 percent of U.S. internet users accessed the social image sharing platform Pinterest. Facebook was ranked first with a 78 percent usage rate.

TikTok has about 1.5 billion monthly active users. TikTok comes in 5th position in a list of the world’s most-used social media sites today.

As of May 2025, the University of South Carolina, Columbia, was the leading higher education institute in the United States in terms of overall social media engagement across Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), and TikTok. The Michigan State University ranked in second place, followed by Miami University (Ohio) and Bowling Green State University, respectively.

LinkedIn has about 1.3 billion monthly active users.

During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, around 83 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 78 and 69 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram, both run by Meta, Inc., due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

More than three-quarters of the Russian online population aged 16 years and older used the Telegram messenger, thus making it the most-used social media platform among those listed in the ranking. WhatsApp ranked second, with a penetration rate of nearly 74 percent, followed by VK and TikTok. Social media usage in Russia In 2024, the daily time spent on social media in Russia was recorded at roughly two hours and 20 minutes per user on average. After Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) were blocked in Russia at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022, a significant increase in activity was recorded on VK and Telegram. For example, the daily audience on VK increased by almost nine percent, while the number of friends requests and feed views grew by 250 percent and 25 percent, respectively. YouTube From the global perspective, YouTube ranked second after Facebook, which remained the leading social media platform with about three billion active users. The U.S.-based channel MrBeast had the highest number of subscribers on YouTube with around 343 million as of January 2025. India-based T-Series followed with 284 million subscribers as of that month.

Monthly Top 50 Social Media Accounts Dataset

This dataset contains monthly records of the top 50 accounts or channels from various social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The data is obtained by scraping the relevant information from the respective Wikipedia pages using web scraping techniques.

Scraping Process

The scraping process involves sending HTTP requests to the Wikipedia pages using the Python requests library. The BeautifulSoup library is then used to parse the HTML content and extract the relevant data from the tables. The scraped data is then processed and compiled into CSV files using the pandas library.

Content

The dataset includes the following information for each social media platform:

Instagram

• Rank: The rank of the account within the top 50.
• Username: The username or handle of the account.
• Owner: The owner or celebrity associated with the account.
• Followers (millions): The number of followers the account has.
• Profession/Activity: The profession or activity associated with the account.
• Country: The country of origin or association.

TikTok

• Rank: The rank of the account within the top 50.
• Username: The username or handle of the account.
• Owner: The owner or celebrity associated with the account.
• Followers (millions): The number of followers the account has.
• Likes (billions): The number of likes received by the account.
• Description: A brief description of the account.
• Country: The country of origin or association.

YouTube

• Rank: The rank of the channel within the top 50.
• Name: The name of the channel.
• Link: The link to the channel.
• Subscribers (millions): The number of subscribers the channel has.
• Primary language: The primary language used in the channel's content.
• Category: The category or genre of the channel.
• Country: The country of origin or association.

Twitter

• Rank: The rank of the account within the top 50.
• Username: The username or handle of the account.
• Owner: The owner or celebrity associated with the account.
• Followers (millions): The number of followers the account has.
• Description: A brief description of the account.
• Country: The country of origin or association.

Updates

The dataset is updated monthly on the 3rd of each month to provide the latest rankings, follower/subscriber counts, likes, and other relevant information for the top 50 accounts or channels on each platform.

Usage

This dataset can be used for various purposes, such as:

• Analyzing trends and changes in the popularity and growth of social media accounts or channels over time.
• Comparing the performance and engagement of accounts or channels across different platforms.
• Conducting research on the influence and impact of social media accounts or channels in different countries and industries.

Acknowledgements

The data in this dataset is obtained from the Wikipedia pages of the respective social media platforms:

• TikTok: List of most-followed TikTok accounts
• YouTube: List of most-subscribed YouTube channels
• Instagram: List of most-followed Instagram accounts
• Twitter: List of most-followed Twitter accounts

Author: amyrmahdy

Date: 3 Jul 2023

The average smartphone user spends 2 hours and 20 minutes a day or 70 hours on social media apps every month and 55% of the population, or 4.88 billion people, have social media accounts. It is the...

YouTube has over 2.5 billion monthly active users.

In 2022, Instagram was the world's leading social media app, with *** million downloads WhatsApp ranked second with *** million downloads, while Telegram surpassed the remaining mobile versions of Meta-owned social media platforms Facebook and Messenger. Newcomer BeReal, a photo-sharing social media app launched in 2020, entered the ranking in tenth position with over ** million global downloads during the examined year.

X has about 500 million monthly active users.

Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users. That’s about 36% of the world’s entire population that log in and use Facebook at least once a month.