As of the third quarter of 2024, WhatsApp was the most active social network among internet users in the United Kingdom (UK), with 79.9 percent of internet users reporting use of the service. Facebook was very close behind, with a rate of 72.3 percent, followed by Facebook Messenger with 56.6 percent. YouTube’s broad audience in the United Kingdom YouTube reaches a broad audience in the UK, making it an attractive partner for advertisers of almost any product. More than 75 percent of individuals of every income bracket watch YouTube, with the likelihood of watching increasing with the pay-grade. Whether advertising basic items or luxury products, marketers should be able to connect with UK audiences through YouTube. There are almost no people in the UK to not use YouTube at least monthly. According to a survey conducted in the third quarter of 2020, 46 percent of respondents went on YouTube on a daily basis. Facebook in the United Kingdom  Facebook enjoys a healthy market position in the UK, holding an estimated  55 percent share of the market. The service attracted  50.6 million UK users during May 2021, and Facebook UK Limited  generated 1.1 billion British pounds in revenue  during 2019. The UK division of the company  posted an operating profit of 121.9 million British pounds that 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.

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, although there is rapid uptake among older age groups. 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 last few years, becoming the most downloaded app between 2020 and 2022, according to Apptopia. The short-form video platform reported that it averaged revenue growth of over 450% between 2019 and 2022. 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 have 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. Revenue is expected to grow by 14.3% in 2024-25, constrained by a slowdown in user growth for most major social media platforms. Over the five years through 2024-25, revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 32.8% to reach £9.8 billion. Looking forward, 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 rising prominence of AI will require the introduction of adequate regulations. The Online Safety Bill sets out new guidelines for social media platforms to abide by, with hefty fines in store for those who do not. Operating costs will swell as platforms look to meet consumers’ expectations, weighing on profit. Over the five years through 2029-30, social media platforms' revenue is projected to climb at an estimated 9.4% to reach £15.4 billion.

In November 2024, Meta's Facebook held approximately ** percent of the social network market in the United Kingdom, while Instagram accounted for approximately ***** percent. Overall, X held ***** percent of the social network market in the UK.

In an online survey conducted during the third quarter of 2024, **** percent of internet users in the United Kingdom reported that WhatsApp was their favorite social media platform, whilst **** percent said that Facebook was their favorite. Overall, only around *** in *** users said that TikTok was their favorite social media service, even though brand awareness of the app is high in the UK.

According to data from February 2025, Facebook was the most popular social network for news access in the United Kingdom, with ** percent of respondents using the service. YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) ranked second and third, with ** and ** percent of users respectively using the networks for news content.

Market Size statistics on the Social Media Platforms industry in the UK

In the fourth quarter of 2022, TikTok was the most popular social media platform for Gen Z consumers to buy products from in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to be the preferred choice for older generations. Additionally, millennials displayed an equal preference for TikTok and Instagram, with ** percent of respondents stating that they had shopped through each platform.

The most-used social media site among teenagers and young adults in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2020 was YouTube. A survey carried out by AudienceProject revealed that 82 percent of 15 to 25-year-olds said they used the video-sharing platform, making it more popular than Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

YouTube stars

The leading celebrity YouTube channel in the UK in terms of the number of subscribers is Ed Sheeran. The pop singer had a 42.8 million subscribers as of December 2019. Other popular celebrity channels were One Direction and Adele, although Ed Sheeran had more subscribers than both of these combined.

Social media and generational differences

Comparing the social media sites most used by other age groups reveals some interesting differences. In the 26 to 35 age group, Facebook was the most popular social media platform with 82.5 percent. Of those aged 36 to 45, less than 30 percent used Facebook, and just 13.2 percent used YouTube.

Social media's influence in the United Kingdom continues to grow, with **** million active users as of February 2025, representing ** percent of the population. This penetration rate surpasses the global average of **** percent, positioning the UK as a leader in social media adoption. The country's high usage reflects a broader trend of increasing social media engagement worldwide, particularly in Northern and Western Europe. Global social media landscape The social media landscape is rapidly evolving, with China currently hosting over one billion users and India projected to become the largest social media audience by 2029. Notably, Nigeria is expected to see a staggering *** percent increase in its online networking audience between 2023 and 2029. In 2024, global social media users spent an average of *** minutes per day on social networks. Facebook is still the market leader Facebook is the most widely utilized social media platform globally, and India boasts *** million Facebook users, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. As of April 2024, it was found that men between the ages of ** and ** were the largest audience for Facebook, accounting for **** percent of global users. Furthermore, Facebooks second-largest audience base could be found with men aged 18 to 24 years.

This dataset contains ~11M tweets related to the 2019 United Kingdom General Election, published and collected between November 12, 2019, and December 12, 2019. In addition, we provide nodes and edges of the superspreader user similarity network, as described in the paper below.

Please, refer to the paper below for more details.

Nizzoli, L., Tardelli, S., Avvenuti, M., Cresci, S., & Tesconi, M. (2021). Coordinated Behavior on Social Media in 2019 UK General Election. In 15th International Conference on Web and Social Media. AAAI.

In detail, the dataset consists of:

• tweet-ids.csv.zip: a CSV file with the column "tweet_id," containing 11,264,820 tweet IDs related to the 2019 United Kingdom General Election, published and collected between November 12, 2019, and December 12, 2019.
• superspreader-nodes.csv.zip: a CSV file with the columns "id" and "cluster," relating to the nodes of the superspreader user similarity network mentioned in the paper.
• superspreader-edges.csv.zip: a CSV file with the columns "source," "target," and "weight," relating to the edges of the superspreader user similarity network mentioned in the paper.

Facebook and YouTube are still the most used social media platforms today.

Social Networks in Georgian Britain (SNiGB) originated in 2008 when it began as the prosopography for Lord Byron and his Times (LBT), an archive of printed letters and diaries by and about Byron’s associates encoded in TEI-XML and rendered as the website LordByron.org using XSLT transformations and XPath queries. These records, used to generate footnotes, included links to name authority files such as the Library of Congress, National Archive (UK), National Portrait Gallery (UK), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). In 2014, the LBT prosopography became an XML relational database with the addition of a demographic file containing fields for place of origin and professions, with linked information about family members, educational institutions, and correspondents. Fields were hand-coded using TEI elements and included place of origin, professions, and correspondents.From 2008 to 2012, the LBT website was hosted by Performant Software in Charlottesville, and sponsored by NINES; in 2012 web hosting was transferred to Virginia Tech University Libraries (VTUL). Dr. Radcliffe has since added an additional 10,000+ names to the original project. This final version of SNiGB content comprising over 37,000 names has been exported into individual XML files by person and organization for the purposes of access, text mining, and reuse.

56.8% of the world’s total population is active on social media.

In 2024, around ** percent of the population of the United Kingdom was active on social media. By 2028, it is expected that ** percent of the country's population will be using social media services. Social media's global reach As of April 2024, Northern and Western Europe possessed the highest rates of social network penetration globally, with **** and **** percent, respectively. Eastern and Middle Africa had the lowest coverage, with **** and *** percent. The global average was **** percent, which means that almost *** out of ***people around the world are using social networks. Other major platforms Although Meta continues to dominate the social media landscape in the UK, other social media brands are consistently getting more popular, especially with younger users. In 2024, video-sharing social media app TikTok had an awareness of over ** percent in the UK and a usage of over ** percent. Snapchat, owned by Snap Inc., had an awareness of around ** percent.

Gen Z and Millennials are the biggest social media users of all age groups.

Facebook ranked as the leading social media platform driving personal care brand shoppers to retailers in the United Kingdom in 2024. Facebook accounted for around 88 percent of the share of purchase intent clicks. TikTok ranked second, with a 7.9 percent share of clicks. Purchase intent clicks refer to the amount of times a consumer has clicked through to a minimum of one retailer during one session.

United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 1000+ Employees data was reported at 90.300 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 85.200 % for 2015. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 1000+ Employees data is updated yearly, averaging 82.200 % from Dec 2012 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 90.300 % in 2016 and a record low of 77.300 % in 2013. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 1000+ Employees data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s UK – Table UK.S039: E Commerce: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media: By Size of Business.

Social networks and friendship groups are important factors related to the development of health risk and health promoting behaviours, mental health and wellbeing, educational attainment, and positive social engagement in adolescence and early adulthood.

The MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit has been studying adolescent social networks and health in the West of Scotland for several decades. The Teenage Friends and Lifestyles (1995), Peers and Levels of Stress (2006), and Adolescent Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe (2011) studies have been a rich source of information on the health needs of Scotland's younger citizens and have helped to identify how risk factors have changed over time.

Net4Health will continue from the previous studies and aims to understand how peer and social network influences on adolescent health operate in the West of Scotland today, and how these influences have changed, particularly in relation to mental health and wellbeing and within changing digital social environments. It is hoped that this study will provide information that will inform the appropriate design of social network interventions to improve health and wellbeing.