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 graph shows a ranking of the most important or useful social media platforms for French businesses accroding to community managers in 2020. The community and social media managers named Facebook as the most important platform to be present on, by around ** percent, a ***** percent augmentation since 2019. Instagram came in second with ** percent, followed by LinkedIn with ** percent. Twitter was also judged as being important by ** percent of community managers.

TikTok entered the BrandZ brand value ranking in 2020 on place ** and with a brand value of **** billion U.S. dollars. In the history on the ranking, only Facebook was valued higher upon entry: the network first appeared in the ranking in 2011, on place **, and its brand value was estimated at **** billion U.S. dollars.

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.

This statistic presents a ranking of the most popular social networks of U.S. Gen X internet users as of the third quarter of 2020. Overall, only ** percent of responding U.S. Generation X online users stated that they used photo sharing app Snapchat, compared to ** percent of the general online population.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2019 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to *** minutes per day, up from *** minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is the Philippines, with online users spending an average of ***** hours and ** minute on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just *** hours and ***** minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is nearly ** percent. Western Europe had a ** percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with *** and ***** 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 flipside, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

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.

Between the second half of 2019 and the first half of 2020, the loved brand on social media was Instagram. The social media platform had accumulated a total of 108.7 million "love" mentions across 104.7 million posts, generating 722 billion potential impressions and over two billion total engagements during the measured time frame. Second-ranked Amazon only generated 27.3 million "love" mentions.

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.

According to a 2020 survey run in the United Kingdom (UK), Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp was the most popular social media platform among those aged 26 to 35. Out of all the respondents, 85 percent had an account on the social networking site. Facebook came in second place, with 80 percent of respondents claiming they used the service while YouTube and Instagram featured third and fourth respectively.

Facebook as a leading digital ad platform

Facebook continues to dominate the social media market in the UK, its penetration rate having been on the rise since 2015. By 2022, the social media platform’s share of monthly active users is forecast to reach 62.44 percent of the United Kingdom’s population. As a platform with such widespread reach not just within the UK but around the world, Facebook is perfectly poised to become a leading online advertising tool. In fact, the social network giant brought in nearly 23 percent of all digital advertising revenue in the United Kingdom in 2018, the highest among all social media platforms. This is forecasted to reach 28 percent by 2021, narrowing the gap with market leader Google.

The news and social media

Facebook remains, albeit to a lesser extent, a news source for nearly 30 percent in the United Kingdom according to figures until 2018. Although this number is significantly lower than in countries such as Italy and Spain where around half of the surveyed population turned to Facebook for news, it is no small figure and one would think that such numbers would reflect a positive perception of social media as a news source. A 2019 survey demonstrated however, that this was not the case with social media ranking lowest in terms of level of trust against other sources such as traditional media, online media, and owned media.

This statistic shows a ranking of the estimated number of social media users in 2020 in Europe, differentiated by country.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).

In 2021, there were 1.21 billion monthly active users of Meta's Instagram, making up over 28 percent of the world's internet users. By 2025, it has been forecast that there will be 1.44 billion monthly active users of the social media platform, which would account for 31.2 percent of global internet users.

How popular is Instagram?

Instagram, as of January 2022, was the fourth most popular social media platform in the world in terms of user numbers. YouTube and WhatsApp ranked in second and third place, respectively, whilst Facebook remained the most popular, with almost three billion monthly active users worldwide.

India had the largest number of Instagram users as of January 2022, with a total of over 230 million users in the country. The second-largest Instagram audience could be found in the United States, with almost 160 million people subscribing to the photo and video sharing app.

Gen Z and Instagram

As of September 2021, Gen Z users in the United States spent an average of five hours per week on Instagram. Although Instagram ranked third in terms of hours per week spent on the platform, Gen Z users spent considerably more time on TikTok, amounting to a weekly average of over 10 hours being spent on the mobile-first video app.

Most followed accounts on Instagram

As of May 2022, Instagram’s own account had 504.37 million followers. In terms of celebrities, Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@chistiano) had over 440.41 million followers on the social network. Moreover, the average media value of an Instagram post by Ronaldo was over 985,000 U.S. dollars.

The most liked post on Instagram as of May 2022 was Photo of an Egg, which was posted in 2019 by the account @world_record_egg. Photo of an Egg has not only exceeded 55 million likes on the platform, but it also has nearly 3.5 million comments, and the account itself has over 4.5 million Instagram followers. After mysterious posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself as part of a mental health campaign aimed at the difficulties and demands of using social media.

As surveyed in November 2020, Facebook was the leading social media platform used by businesses in Vietnam. Almost all firms participating in the survey reported having an official Facebook account. Zalo was the only Vietnamese brand among the top social media platforms for companies, ranking fourth with ** percent of respondents.

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.

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.

As of February 2025, it was found that men between the ages of 25 and 34 years made up Facebook's largest audience, accounting for 18.5 percent of global users. Additionally, Facebook's second-largest audience base could be found with men aged 18 to 24 years. Facebook connects the world Founded in 2004 and going public in 2012, Facebook is one of the biggest internet companies in the world with influence that goes beyond social media. It is widely considered as one of the Big Four tech companies, along with Google, Apple, and Amazon (all together known under the acronym GAFA). Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide and the company also owns three other billion-user properties: mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as well as photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook usersThe vast majority of Facebook users connect to the social network via mobile devices. This is unsurprising, as Facebook has many users in mobile-first online markets. Currently, India ranks first in terms of Facebook audience size with 378 million users. The United States, Brazil, and Indonesia also all have more than 100 million Facebook users each.

Facebook was the leading social media service in Poland in December 2021 - it had over ** million users. Two Polish social networking sites were among the leading ten - wykop.pl and siepomaga.pl.

The share of Swedish social media users increased consistently over the period from 2010 to 2020. Just over half of Swedes used social networking platforms in 2010, whereas the corresponding figures for as of the third quarter of 2020 were 89 percent. The social media penetration among children in the country was also noticeable. As of 2018, over half of the interviewed ten-year-olds reported to be using social media. The share of six-year-olds amounted to six percent and was, therefore, the age group with smallest penetration rate that year.

Which social media platforms do Swedes use?   Facebook was the most commonly used social media platform in Sweden in 2020. To be precise, 80 percent of Swedes had used the app. It was followed by Instagram and YouTube, both of which had usage rate of around 60 percent that year. All other social media platforms in the ranking were used by 30 percent of people or less that year.

Social media worldwide   From a global perspective, Internet users spent 144minutes per day on average on social networking in 2019. The daily social media usage length constantly increased over the years, starting at 90 minutes daily in 2012 and amounting to more than two hours ever since 2016.

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.

When asked whether they had made a purchase via social media in the last six months in 2020, approximately ******* of young people (aged 18 to 34) in the United Kingdom, stated that they had. This places the UK at the forefront in terms of social media product purchases, compared to other European countries. Brands are already very present on social media in the UK, in fact they invest more in advertising and so the UK also leads the ranking of adverting revenue.

Direct selling on social media

E-commerce companies choosing to sell their goods or services to consumers through social media directly have several factors to consider, such as what platforms to use, what kind of consumers to target, when to strike, whether or not their items are suitable for the platform, among other things. In 2020, an estimated quarter of e-commerce enterprises worldwide were planning to sell their goods on social media. That year, only about ** percent were already doing so.

French social media trade habits

While the UK was in the lead in terms of social media trade in 2020, it was also a commonality among online shoppers in France. When asked how much they would usually spend when buying on a social network, approximately half of French adults stated they normally spent anywhere between ** and ** euros. The main reason French consumers listed for buying through social media was the presence of a promotional offer.