China’s social commerce arena is led by the Instagram-like Xiaohongshu, known as rednote internationally. Integrating community, content, and commerce, the shopping recommendation app Xiaohongshu reached 225 million monthly active users in China in December 2024. What makes Xaiohongshu stand out? Started as a travel and lifestyle advice site in 2013, Xiaohongshu has grown into a prestigious e-commerce brand valued at 23 billion yuan in 2024. The app is particularly popular among young, female consumers, living in top-tier cities. What sets Xiaohongshu apart is its emphasis on authenticity and community. Users on the platform share detailed product reviews, lifestyle tips, and personal experiences, creating a trusted community for consumers to make informed purchase decisions. What does Xiaohongshu’s success reflect? Xiaohongshu’s approach aligns with the preferences of today’s Chinese consumers who value social validation and community engagement in the shopping journey. Compared to other e-commerce and content platforms, Xiaohongshu had the highest share of micro-influencers. These key opinion consumers, despite their relatively smaller follower counts, are often regarded as more authentic with their genuine passion and expertise in a niche industry. Beauty, fashion, and food were the most common industries covered by the A-list Xiaohongshu influencers.

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.

According to a survey on digital usage in China, around 91.8 percent of respondents had used WeChat as of the third quarter of 2023. The short video app Douyin, the social commerce site Xiaohongshu, and the Twitter-like site Weibo, were among the most popular social media platforms in China. How successful is WeChat in China? The country’s most popular messaging app, WeChat, boasts over one billion monthly active users. For many Chinese consumers, WeChat is part of daily life, helping them to organize tasks such as paying bills, ordering food delivery, and calling a taxi. On average, WeChat users spent about an hour and 20 minutes per day on the app. Large user base with high engagement The social media scene in China is huge and mobile-centric. In 2023, the social media penetration rate amounted to 74 percent in China, slightly higher than in countries like the United States and Japan. While the user number has shown signs of reaching a saturation point, Chinese consumers have been spending more time online, with a considerable daily usage of social media.

China was home to ove 1.18 bilion social media users in 2025, making it the country with the largest audience. It is expected that by 2030, the number of social media users in the country will exceed 1.3 billion. Additionally, India currently has around 874 billion users, and is estimated to reach 1.12 billion by 2023.

The number of social network users in Thailand was around 52.63 million in 2020. This figure is forecast to reach almost 60 million users by 2026. The figures indicated that the number of social network users has been gradually increasing over the years and would continue to rise in the following years.

Social media in Thailand

As of January 2021, China had the highest number of monthly active social media users worldwide, followed by India and Indonesia, with Thailand ranking seventh at 55 million users. By 2023, the penetration rate of social network users in Thailand is forecast to reach approximately 53 percent, making it the majority of the Thai population.

Social media user profile in Thailand

For social media, Facebook and Youtube were the leading platforms in Thailand in the third quarter of 2020, with around 94 percent as a share of users for both platforms among others such as Line, Instagram, and Twitter. In that same time period, internet users in Thailand spent around 8.44 hours per day on average using the internet, and two and a half hours to use their social media.

As of February 2025, 5.56 billion individuals worldwide were internet users, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent of the world's population, were social media users. Global internet usage Connecting billions of people worldwide, the internet is a core pillar of the modern information society. Northern Europe ranked first among worldwide regions by the share of the population using the internet in 20254. In The Netherlands, Norway and Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the population used the internet as of February 2025. North Korea was at the opposite end of the spectrum, with virtually no internet usage penetration among the general population, ranking last worldwide. Eastern Asia was home to the largest number of online users worldwide – over 1.34 billion at the latest count. Southern Asia ranked second, with around 1.2 billion internet users. China, India, and the United States rank ahead of other countries worldwide by the number of internet users. Worldwide internet user demographics As of 2024, the share of female internet users worldwide was 65 percent, five percent less than that of men. Gender disparity in internet usage was bigger in African countries, with around a ten percent difference. Worldwide regions, like the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe, showed a smaller usage gap between these two genders. As of 2024, global internet usage was higher among individuals between 15 and 24 years old across all regions, with young people in Europe representing the most significant usage penetration, 98 percent. In comparison, the worldwide average for the age group 15–24 years was 79 percent. The income level of the countries was also an essential factor for internet access, as 93 percent of the population of the countries with high income reportedly used the internet, as opposed to only 27 percent of the low-income markets.

As of February 2025, the United States was the region with the largest TikTok audience by far, with almost ****** million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around ***** million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost ***** million users on TikTok watching short-videos. From Reels to Shorts: social short video takes the internet Between 2021 and 2022 some of the most popular social media platforms have been adding short-video features on the heels of TikTok’s popularity. YouTube Shorts, which rolled out to the global market in June 2021, reached *** billion monthly active logged-in users in 2023. In comparison, Instagram’s short-video format Reels, which launched in August 2020, presented a higher view rate than regular videos on the platform between June 2021 and June 2022, as well as a higher likes rate than other content types on Instagram. TikTok business model TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, along with the short-video app Douyin (TikTok’s version for the Chinese market), video platform Xigua, and popular news app Toutiao. While the products intended for domestic market consumption operate in the Chinese digital ecosystem and have a plurality of established monetization methods such as a live-shopping events hosted by famous influencers, TikTok’s main revenue stream comes from online advertising. In 2022, TikTok was estimated to have generated around **** billion U.S. dollars worldwide via online advertising.

The social media industry in Hong Kong has gone from strength to strength. Facebook and WhatsApp remained the top with a 70.6 percent monthly usage rate as of the third quarter of 2024. Facebook lost its dominance in the market with a 77 percent penetration rate, followed by Instagram. The high internet quality It comes as no surprise that a large percentage of the population in the Asian financial hub are active social media users. Hong Kong citizens are known for being well connected in the social media world. It consistently ranks as having one of the fastest internet connections worldwide - as of April 2023, Hong Kong had an average fixed broadband internet connection speed of 205.19 Mbps. Facebook in Hong Kong Facebook is not just used for staying connected with friends and family; many in the financial hub also use it to keep up with the latest news and to research or find products to purchase. With such a high user penetration rate, Facebook has been particularly focused on brand advertising and user engagement. Mobile advertising accounted for a large chunk of Facebook’s global advertising revenue. In Hong Kong, social media advertising grew by 12 percent, while Facebook's ad revenue increased by four percent in the third quarter of 2022.

******** was the most popular social media platform for Gen Z, or 15-to-19-year-olds, in the Netherlands in 2020, with nearly all respondents using the service. This according to domestic survey information. The ********* service already ranked as the Netherlands' overall most popular social medium in terms of users. YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat were also very popular, all reaching a penetration rate of over ** percent. Karaoke app TikTok, on the other hand, was much less popular, as only ** percent of them used the video application. Why is TikTok low in this ranking? Chinese video and sing-along application TikTok, formerly Musical.ly, made a global name as being one of the most popular smartphone apps for Generation Z. Here, it seemingly ranks low as the source used ages ** and up. This age group might potentially fall outside TikTok’s user base. While there is no data for the Netherlands that investigates the age groups below **, download numbers suggest the app grew in popularity in the Netherlands after Bytedance (TikTok’s owner) merged Musical.ly and TikTok in August 2018. A clash of generations Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gen Z uses Instagram and Snapchat much more often than their Millennial counterparts (defined by the source as 20-to 39-year olds). Interestingly, Pinterest was also more popular among the younger generation. The picture gallery app does not rank among the most popular apps in the Netherlands, reaching less than **** million people in 2019. Facebook, on the other hand, was more preferred by Millennials than it was by Generation Z.

As of February 2025, China ranked first among the countries with the most internet users worldwide. The world's most populated country had 1.11 billion internet users, more than triple the third-ranked United States, with just around 322 million internet users. Overall, all BRIC markets had over two billion internet users, accounting for four of the ten countries with more than 100 million internet users. Worldwide internet usage As of October 2024, there were more than five billion internet users worldwide. There are, however, stark differences in user distribution according to region. Eastern Asia is home to 1.34 billion internet users, while African and Middle Eastern regions had lower user figures. Moreover, the urban areas showed a higher percentage of internet access than rural areas. Internet use in China China ranks first in the list of countries with the most internet users. Due to its ongoing and fast-paced economic development and a cultural inclination towards technology, more than a billion of the estimated 1.4 billion population in China are online. As of the third quarter of 2023, around 87 percent of Chinese internet users stated using WeChat, the most popular social network in the country. On average, Chinese internet users spent five hours and 33 minutes online daily.

In 2024, Facebook was the leading social media platform in most of the Southeast Asian countries in terms of traffic generation to other websites, with the highest share in Timor-Leste at around 97 percent. YouTube, X (Twitter), Instagram, and Pinterest were other platforms that had significant social media traffic shares in Southeast Asian markets that year. Social media advertising and web traffic referrals Traffic referrals from social media are crucial in social media advertising. Links shared on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter help direct potential customers to a brand’s website or landing page. This increases exposure, website visits, and conversions, such as sales or leads, which are key benefits of social media marketing according to marketers. Traffic referrals also serve as an important tool for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Furthermore, by analyzing which platforms and content generate the most traffic, businesses can refine their strategies to focus on the highest-performing channels. Social media advertising – a multibillion-dollar business Revenue from social media advertising has continued to rise rapidly. This growth was driven by the ability to track user behavior, refine ad targeting, and deliver highly personalized content. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok generate billions of dollars of ad revenue annually. The owner of Facebook and Instagram, Meta Platforms’s annual advertising revenue exceeded 160 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Countries such as China, Japan, and Australia are among the largest social media advertising markets in the Asia-Pacific region, with China’s projected social media ad spend reaching nearly 97 billion U.S. dollars in 2025.

As of February 2025, India had a total of 413.85 million Instagram users, the largest Instagram audience in the world. The United States had 171.7 million users, and Brazil had 140.7 million. Indonesia, Turkey, and Japan ranked in fourth, fifth and sixth position, respectively. Kazakhstan is the leading country for Instagram audience reach, with 86.2 percent of the population using the social media service. Turkey came in second, with a penetration rate of 85.5 percent and Uruguay ranked third, with 87.1 percent, followed closely by the UAE, Brazil, and Bahrain. It took Instagram 11.2 years to reach the milestone of 2 billion monthly active users worldwide. WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, took 11 years, whilst Facebook took 13.3 years and YouTube took just over 14 years. Instagram’s demographics in the United States As of March 2025, Instagram was the fourth most visited social media service in the United States, after Facebook, Pinterest and X. Out of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok was the most used of all three platforms by Generation Z. Overall, 57 percent of Gen Z social media users used Instagram in 2021, down from 61 percent in 2020 and 64 percent in 2019. Instagram finds most popularity with those in the 25 to 34 year age group, and as of January 2025, roughly 28.3 of all users in the United States belonged to this age group. The social media app was also more likely to be used by women. Most followed accounts on Instagram Instagram’s official account had the most followers as of April 2024 with over 672 million followers. Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) had over 628 million followers on the platform, while the Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had over 502 million followers. The Instagram accounts of the American singer and actress Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) and the media personality and makeup mogul Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) had over 400 million followers each.

This statistic presents a ranking of the most popular social networks and instant messaging platforms in China as of July 2015, sorted by daily reach. During the survey period, it was found that 49 percent of internet users accessed Moments (WeChat) on a daily basis.

China is leading the ranking by number of social media users , recording 977.29 million users. Following closely behind is India with 566.11 million users, while Seychelles is trailing the ranking with 0.12 million users, resulting in a difference of 977.17 million users to the ranking leader, China. 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).

Between December 2024 and January 2025, Chinese-developed social media app Xiaohongshu (better known in English as RedNote before changing its official English name to rednote) was chosen by TikTok users in the United States as the platform to join to protest the upcoming ban or forced TikTok sale. Despite being only available in Mandarin, U.S. downloads of the Instagram-like photo and social app were 509,000 in the last quarter of 2024, and amounted to approximately 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2025. The app, which presents a visual format and functions similar to TikTok, including vertical scrolling, has seen Chinese-based audiences and U.S. audiences interact in new and unforeseen ways, such as language exchanges. The U.S. TikTok ban In April 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill ordering the sale of TikTok and its separation from ByteDance, or a ban on the entire platform within the U.S. market in case TikTok failed to comply. U.S. users choosing Xiaohongshu was a particularly surprising move, as previous surveys suggested different consumer preferences in case TikTok was banned. Traditional social media and video platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram were given as the possible winners of a TikTok ban. While Xiaohongshu might not be the platform U.S. TikTok users and content creators might choose in the future, consumers in the region have shown that alleged privacy issues specific to Chinese-developed technology are not their major concern. Overall, over 10 countries and regions worldwide opted for banning TikTok on government-owned devices, while only Afghanistan and India opted for a full app ban. Xiaohongshu vs Douyin in China Differently from TikTok and Douyin (its original version accessible only in the Chinese market), which are two separate entities and do not operate within the same audiences, content management principles, and even terms of use on what the platforms allow, Xiaohongshu presents only one interface. While Douyin was the third most-valuable app based on user traffic value in China in 2024, Xiaohongshu ranked tenth with a user traffic value of 27 billion yuan. In terms of content creators, Xiaohongshu hosted more micro creators (with up to 500,000 followers) and fewer Key Opinion Leaders in 2023, while Douyin had a relatively smaller micro-creators base.

The number of Tencent's WeChat active accounts has been increasing steadily. As at the end of March 2025, the Chinese multi-functional social media platform had over *** billion monthly active users. WeChat users First released in 2011, WeChat is a mobile messaging app developed by the Chinese company Tencent. In its home market of China, WeChat was marketed as Weixin and was rebranded as WeChat in 2012 for international audiences. In 2018, WeChat and Weixin surpassed *********** users, which was a significant increase from the previous year. Today, WeChat is one of the leading social networks worldwide, ranking ******in terms of active user numbers. It has users from different age groups. Special features on WeChat WeChat has lots of popular messaging app features, including Moments. Most WeChat users access WeChat Moments every time they open the app. The app also provides a broad range of services, such as financial management and mobile shopping. Short videos, online payment, and gaming were the most popular activities among WeChat users. A survey found that half of users spent *** to ** minutes per visit on the short video function, WeChat Channels.

As of February 2025, India was the country with the largest YouTube audience by far, with approximately 491 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. The United States followed, with around 253 million YouTube viewers. Brazil came in third, with 144 million users watching content on YouTube. The United Kingdom saw around 54.8 million internet users engaging with the platform in the examined period. What country has the highest percentage of YouTube users? In July 2024, the United Arab Emirates was the country with the highest YouTube penetration worldwide, as around 94 percent of the country's digital population engaged with the service. In 2024, YouTube counted around 100 million paid subscribers for its YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services. YouTube mobile markets In 2024, YouTube was among the most popular social media platforms worldwide. In terms of revenues, the YouTube app generated approximately 28 million U.S. dollars in revenues in the United States in January 2024, as well as 19 million U.S. dollars in Japan.

As of April 2025, India had the biggest Snapchat user base in the world, with an audience of 210 million users. The United States ranked in second place with a Snapchat audience base of over 105 million users. Snapchat’s popularity Being one of the most popular social networks worldwide and especially liked by younger online audiences, Snapchat is an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. According to industry estimates, Snapchat’s 2019 advertising revenue is forecast to amount to over 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, up from 1.53 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Snapchat is a mobile-first social network, with the majority of visits generated via mobile phones. According to U.S. Snapchat users, the main reason for using the platform was to keep in contact with friends and family. Snapchat’s vanishing photo sharing function has popularized the sharing of everyday photos in a story stream, a setup that has since also been adopted by other photo and messaging apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Despite the competition, Snapchat users are among the most engaged – a total of 48 percent of U.S. Snapchat users post content to the app on a weekly basis. Only WhatsApp and Facebook can boast a more active audience.

As of February 2025, English was the most popular language for web content, with over 49.4 percent of websites using it. Spanish ranked second, with six percent of web content, while the content in the German language followed, with 5.6 percent. English as the leading online language United States and India, the countries with the most internet users after China, are also the world's biggest English-speaking markets. The internet user base in both countries combined, as of January 2023, was over a billion individuals. This has led to most of the online information being created in English. Consequently, even those who are not native speakers may use it for convenience. Global internet usage by regions As of October 2024, the number of internet users worldwide was 5.52 billion. In the same period, Northern Europe and North America were leading in terms of internet penetration rates worldwide, with around 97 percent of its populations accessing the internet.

According to the Fortune China 500 ranking in 2024, which was based on company financials in 2023, JD.com, Alibaba Group, and Tencent kept their positions as the highest-earning internet enterprise based in China. With an annual revenue of over *** billion U.S. dollars, JD.com ranked ** among all Chinese companies. Its close rival Alibaba Group reported about *** billion U.S. dollars in revenue. Tencent followed with ** million U.S. dollars. Due to censorship regulations, global internet leaders are blocked in China. JD.com: robust logistics infrastructure JD.com has a highly efficient and self-owned logistics network, which ensures rapid delivery and product authenticity. Quality and counterfeit risks are reduced by its direct sales model, which gives it greater control over quality. Using AI, big data, and an omnichannel strategy, the company has consistently improved the customer experience and optimized supply chains. Strategic partnerships with other well-established firms like Tencent, Walmart, and luxury brands, along with its fintech arm JD Digits, strengthen its ecosystem. JD.com is also recognized for outstanding customer service and sustainability initiatives, creating a reputable and innovative brand in China’s competitive e-commerce landscape. Alibaba: the architect of the shopping spree On November 11, 2009, Alibaba launched its first Singles' Day shopping event, offering big discounts on countless products on its platforms. Since then, the shopping festival has turned into a multibillion-dollar, annual celebration. Although e-commerce remains the backbone of the conglomerate, it has diversified its business into cloud computing and digital entertainment, such as acquiring the Chinese popular video-sharing site Youku Tudou. Tencent: the fortress with diversities Within China, Tencent’s products have experienced immense popularity with the likes of instant messengers WeChat and QQ, social networking service Qzone, and mobile game Honor of Kings. In comparison with its social network counterparts, Tencent adopts a different business approach — increasing customer reach before app monetization. Instead of depending on advertising income, the enterprise focused more on value-added services, such as smartphone and PC-based gaming, digital content, and membership subscriptions. Online advertising accounted for less than a ***** of Tencent’s annual revenue.