Over the five years through 2025-26, industry revenue is forecast to expand at a compound annual rate of 20.3% to reach £12.5 billion. 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. 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 past five years, becoming the most downloaded app between 2020 and 2022, according to Apptopia. The short-form video platform has over 30 million monthly users in the UK in 2025. 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 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. In 2025, more social media platforms are using AI to boost user engagement. This improves click-through rates and drives higher advertising revenue. Industry revenue is expected to grow by 6.3% in 2025-26. Over the five years through 2030-31, social media platforms' revenue is projected to climb at an estimated 9.2% to reach £19.4 billion. 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 tightening of regulations will raise industry compliance costs, weighing on profit margin. Older age groups present a new revenue opportunity for social media platforms if they can bridge the gap between passive TV consumption and interactive digital engagement. Augmented Reality (AR) technology will move beyond filters to become standard for immersive product trials, interactive ads, and virtual meetups

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.

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.

In 2004, a Harvard student launched a platform that would go on to redefine how humans connect. Fast forward to 2025, social media isn't just a way to stay in touch, it’s where people shop, learn, protest, play, and even find love. From early-morning scrolls to late-night reels, platforms have...

The number of Instagram users in the United Kingdom was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 2.1 million users (+7.02 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Instagram user base is estimated to reach 32 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Instagram users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here with regards to the platform instagram, 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.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).

Employment statistics on the Social Media Platforms industry in the UK

On a foggy morning in early January 2025, a small fitness brand in Austin, Texas, posted a short behind-the-scenes clip on TikTok. Within 48 hours, that video had over 2.3 million views, tripled their followers, and caused their website to crash from unexpected traffic. It wasn’t a stroke of luck,...

The number of social media users in the United Kingdom was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total *** million users (+**** percent). After the eleventh consecutive increasing year, the social media user base is estimated to reach ***** 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).

A list of UK local authorities which are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Also includes those with RSS feeds, web development blogs and open data.

Introduction In 2010, a small coffee shop in Portland decided to run its first Facebook ad. The owner spent just $20, targeting locals within a 5-mile radius. The result? A weekend rush that nearly tripled their regular traffic. Fast forward to 2025, and stories like this are no longer the...

In 2025, Meta's Facebook held approximately ***** percent of the social network market in the United Kingdom, while X (formerly Twitter) accounted for approximately ******percent. Overall, Instagram held *****percent of the social network market in the UK.

In 2008, the average human attention span was 12 seconds. Fast forward to 2025, and many studies suggest it's now hovering around 8 seconds, shorter than that of a goldfish. It’s no coincidence that during this same period, social media platforms surged to dominate how we consume content. Whether you're...

In the spring of 2020, a simple tweet claimed that sipping hot water every 15 minutes could kill the coronavirus. No medical source backed it, yet the post quickly amassed over 150,000 shares. Fast forward to 2025, and we’ve learned that misinformation online is not a bug; it’s a system...

The use of social media platforms continues to increase in the United Kingdom (UK) and is predicted to do so for the foreseeable future. As of 2024, there are a total of **** million social network users in the UK. The number of social media users in the UK is expected to reach ** million by 2027. Facebook users in the United Kingdom Social media network Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta in a move towards the metaverse, had ***** million users in the United Kingdom as of December 2021, a relatively small increase on the previous year of *** million. Two years prior, the number of FB users in the UK was ***** million. Throughout 2021, Facebook’s user numbers declined, sinking to ***** in September, however, toward the end of the year, audience figures recovered. Furthermore, Facebook Messenger, Facebook’s instant messaging app, had a total of ***** million UK users at the end of 2021. The majority of UK Facebook users at the end of last year belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group which made up **** percent of all users. Overall, **** percent of audiences this age group were women and **** percent were men. Popular social networks in the United Kingdom In 2021, social media app Instagram had a total of ** million UK users. Instagram was most popular amongst 25 to 34 year olds, accounting for approximately a third of users. In addition, professional online networking platform LinkedIn also finds popularity amongst this demographic, with **** percent of its users being between the ages of 25 and 34 years.

Indicators from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) related to people’s social media use and attitudes towards elections in Great Britain.

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.

According to a survey conducted in the United Kingdom in the third quarter of 2024, the main reason for using social media was ****************************************, with ** percent of internet users choosing this reason. Overall, **** percent of internet users in the UK said their main reason for accessing social media platforms was to fill spare time.