How many people use social media?

              Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2024, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over six billion in 2028.

              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 59 percent. This figure is anticipated to grow as lesser 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. Mobile-first market 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 151 minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of 40 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 one billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately 2.9 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.

How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 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 flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

The global social media penetration rate in was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 11.6 (+18.19 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the penetration rate is estimated to reach 75.31 and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the social media penetration rate of was continuously increasing over the past years.

During a January 2024 global survey among marketers, nearly 60 percent reported plans to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes in the following 12 months. LinkedIn and Instagram followed, respectively mentioned by 57 and 56 percent of the respondents intending to use them more. According to the same survey, Facebook was the most important social media platform for marketers worldwide.

During a 2024 survey, 77 percent of respondents from Nigeria stated that they used social media as a source of news. In comparison, just 23 percent of Japanese respondents said the same. Large portions of social media users around the world admit that they do not trust social platforms either as media sources or as a way to get news, and yet they continue to access such networks on a daily basis.

              Social media: trust and consumption

              Despite the majority of adults surveyed in each country reporting that they used social networks to keep up to date with news and current affairs, a 2018 study showed that social media is the least trusted news source in the world. Less than 35 percent of adults in Europe considered social networks to be trustworthy in this respect, yet more than 50 percent of adults in Portugal, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia said that they got their news on social media.

              What is clear is that we live in an era where social media is such an enormous part of daily life that consumers will still use it in spite of their doubts or reservations. Concerns about fake news and propaganda on social media have not stopped billions of users accessing their favorite networks on a daily basis.
              Most Millennials in the United States use social media for news every day, and younger consumers in European countries are much more likely to use social networks for national political news than their older peers.
              Like it or not, reading news on social is fast becoming the norm for younger generations, and this form of news consumption will likely increase further regardless of whether consumers fully trust their chosen network or not.

As of April 2024, around 16.5 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide was aged 34 years or younger.

              Teens and social media

              As one of the biggest social networks worldwide, Instagram is especially popular with teenagers. As of fall 2020, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens report feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious.
              Social media can have negative effects on teens, which is also much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that 35 percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported to have experienced cyber bullying when using social media, while in comparison only five percent of teenagers with high social-emotional well-being stated the same. As such, social media can have a big impact on already fragile states of mind.

Social media companies are starting to offer users the option to subscribe to their platforms in exchange for monthly fees. Until recently, social media has been predominantly free to use, with tech companies relying on advertising as their main revenue generator. However, advertising revenues have been dropping following the COVID-induced boom. As of July 2023, Meta Verified is the most costly of the subscription services, setting users back almost 15 U.S. dollars per month on iOS or Android. Twitter Blue costs between eight and 11 U.S. dollars per month and ensures users will receive the blue check mark, and have the ability to edit tweets and have NFT profile pictures. Snapchat+, drawing in four million users as of the second quarter of 2023, boasts a Story re-watch function, custom app icons, and a Snapchat+ badge.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, around 86 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 79 and 65 percent of the respondents.

              The global social media marketing segment

              According to the same study, 59 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 2024. 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.

Research-and-Development Time Series for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. engages in social media and streaming services in the United States. The company operates Truth Social, a social media platform for free expression; and Truth+, a streaming platform focusing on news, Christian content, and family friendly programming. It also offers Truth.Fi, a financial service and FinTech brand that incorporates America First investment vehicles. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida.

Current-Deferred-Revenue Time Series for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. engages in social media and streaming services in the United States. The company operates Truth Social, a social media platform for free expression; and Truth+, a streaming platform focusing on news, Christian content, and family friendly programming. It also offers Truth.Fi, a financial service and FinTech brand that incorporates America First investment vehicles. Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida.

Current-Ratio Time Series for Gmo Internet Inc. GMO internet group, Inc. provides various Internet services worldwide. The company offers Internet infrastructure services in the areas of domain, hosting, cloud, security, payments, e-commerce support, website production support, WiFi providers, customer support, electronic seals, online shopping, and others. It also offers online advertising and media services, such as media services, research, coupons, web marketing, and ad tech services, and internet financial services, including internet securities, and FX and internet banking services. In addition, the company engages in business support, property technology, venture capital, art, AI, and robotics services, as well as involved in cryptocurrency trading related activities. GMO internet group, Inc. was formerly known as GMO Internet, Inc. and changed its name to GMO internet group, Inc. in September 2022. The company was incorporated in 1976 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

The data set of this article is related to the paper "Dynamical structure of social map in ancient China" (2022, Physica A, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2022.128209) . This article demonstrates the data of social relations between cities in ancient China, ranging from 618 AD to 1644 AD. The raw data of social associations between elites used to build social maps are extracted from the China Biographical Database. The raw data contain 14610 elites and 29673 social associations, which cover 366 cities in China. The dataset of this article is relevant both for social and natural scientists interested in the social and economic history of ancient China. The data can be used for further insights/analyses on the evolutionary pattern of geo-social architecture, and the geo-history from the viewpoint of social network.

The dataset contains $3$ files: "Networks.xlsx", "Coordinates.xlsx", and "SocialMap.html". The "Networks.xlsx" has 3 columns, representing the source node (city), target node (city), and weight of a link between two nodes, respectively. The "Networks.xlsx" contains $9$ sheets, which are the data for different dynasties named by Early Tang, Late Tang, Early Northern-Song, Late Northern-Song, Early Southern-Song, Late Southern-Song, Yuan, Early Ming, and Late Ming. Noticeably, the "Networks.xlsx" can be visualized by the network software of Gephi directly. The "Coordinates.xlsx" has 4 columns storing longitude and latitude for all cities that appeared in 9 networks. The first and second columns are English names and Chinese names of cities; the third and fourth columns are longitudes and latitudes of cities. The "SocialMap.html" provides a visualization platform, in which users could select and illustrate the evolution of social maps intuitively.

Facebook received 73,390 user data requests from federal agencies and courts in the United States during the second half of 2023. The social network produced some user data in 88.84 percent of requests from U.S. federal authorities. The United States accounts for the largest share of Facebook user data requests worldwide.

Net-Receivables Time Series for Sprout Social Inc. Sprout Social, Inc. designs, develops, and operates a web-based social media management platform in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company provides cloud software for social messaging, data and workflows in a unified system of record, intelligence, and action. It offers AI-powered solutions, such as publishing and scheduling, social customer care, reporting and analytics, social listening and business intelligence, reputation management, social commerce, influencer marketing, employee advocacy, and automation and workflows. In addition, the company provides smart inbox, comprehensive case management, social customer relationship management, social monitoring and alerts, customer service tools, and automation; and centralized content planning, creation, and publishing, automated scheduling, content performance reporting, suggested content, message approval workflows, publishing permissions and governance, and content and asset libraries. Further, it offers social media; content performance, customer service and team, custom report builder, and reporting API; and market research, brand health, competitive insights, consumer trends, and product feedback; and social commerce, reputation and review management, mobile applications, and chat bot creation and management. Additionally, the company offers professional services consisting of consulting and training services. It serves social and community management; public relations; marketing; influencer marketing; customer service and care; commerce, sales and customer acquisition; recruiting and hiring, product development, and business strategy; and small-and-medium-sized businesses, mid-market companies, enterprises, marketing agencies, government, non-profit, and educational institutions. The company was incorporated in 2010 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

The Internet access indicator measures the prevalence of different Internet technology options available in Champaign County, Illinois, and the U.S., at two different speeds: 4/1 Mbps and 25/3 Mbps.

Seven types of connection options are evaluated: ADSL, cable, fiber, fixed wireless, satellite, "other" technology, and "any" technology, which includes the previous six options.

Satellite internet, at both speeds, is the most widely available in all three areas. One hundred percent of Champaign County residents have access to satellite internet at both speeds. Cable internet is also widely available across all three areas, and over 90 percent of Champaign County residents have access to cable internet. Fiber internet is the least widely available type of technology, aside from "other" technology. However, fiber internet is now available to almost 38 percent of Champaign County residents as of December 2020, an increase from approximately 25 percent in June 2020.

The ability of Champaign County residents to access the Internet has become key in many facets of life, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Internet access provides economic, educational, and social opportunities; having or not having Internet access has become not only a technological issue, but an equity issue.

This data was retrieved from the Federal Communications Commission’s Fixed Broadband Deployment Area Comparison, and dates from December 2020.

Source: Federal Communications Commission. (2020). Fixed Broadband Deployment. Area Comparison. https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/. (Accessed 3 June 2022).

ABSTRACT Objective: the literature on board interlocks has increased in recent years, focusing on understanding board composition and its relationships with other companies’ boards. Such studies usually require multiple procedures of data extraction, handling, and analysis to create and analyze social networks. However, these procedures are not standardized, and there is a lack of methodological instructions available to make this process easier for researchers. This tutorial intends to describe the logical steps taken to collect data, treat them, and map and measure the network properties to provide researchers with the sources to replicate it in their own research. We contribute to the literature in the management field by proposing an empirical methodological approach to conduct board interlocks’ research. Proposal: our tutorial describes and provides examples of data collection, directors’ data treatment, and the use of these data to map and measure network structural properties using an open-source tool - R statistical software. Conclusions: our main contribution is a tutorial detailing the steps required to map and analyze board interlocks, making this process easier, standardized, and more accessible for all researchers who wish to develop social network analysis studies.

The global number of Facebook users was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2027 by in total 391 million users (+14.36 percent). After the fourth consecutive increasing year, the Facebook user base is estimated to reach 3.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2027. Notably, the number of Facebook users was continuously increasing over the past years. User figures, shown here regarding the platform Facebook, 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).

Microdata of the ANTIELAB Research Data Archive - Teargas Map

Field definition:

event-id: an unique event identifier time_interval: time interval within when the event happened district: one of the 18 Hong Kong districts (in Chinese) location1-3: specific locations identified in the post(s) (in Chinese)

The shape file contains the WSG84 coordinates of each of the identified locations of every event. You can look up the geographical coordinates of the events by matching the field ‘event_id’ in the shape file with that in the CSV file. The coordinates are provided by Google’s Geocoding API and Place API.

December 7, 2022: This updated version fixes a data format issue occurred when exporting the coordinates to the data repository. It also makes the date format of the events consistent to avoid user’s misidentification. These changes do not affect the analysis and the results of the original paper.

Reference: Teo, E., Fu, KW. (2021) A novel systematic approach of constructing protests repertoires from social media: comparing the roles of organizational and non-organizational actors in social movement. J Comput Soc Sc. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42001-021-00101-3

Companion DATA of the paper "Using social media and personality traits to assess software developers’ emotions" submitted to the IEEE Access journal, 2022.

The folders contain:

/analysis analyzed_tweets_by_psychologists.csv: file containing the manual analysis done by psychologists analyzed_tweets_by_participants.csv: file containing the manual analysis done by participants analyzed_tweets_by_psychologists_solved_divergencies.csv: file containing the manual analysis done by psychologists over 51 divergent tweets' classifications

/dataset alldata.json: contains the dataset used in the paper

/notebooks General - Charts.ipynb: notebook file containing all charts produced in the study, including those in the paper Statistics - Lexicons and Ensembles.ipynb: notebook file with the statistics for the five lexicons and ensembles used in the study Statistics - Linear Regression.ipynb: notebook file with the multiple linear regression results

Statistics - Polynomial Regression: notebook file with the polynomial regression results
Statistics - Psychologists versus Participants.ipynb: notebook file with the statistics between the psychologists and participants manual analysis
Statistics - Working x Non-working.ipynb: notebook file containing the statistical analysis for the tweets posted during work period and those posted outside of working period

/surveys Demographic_Survey.pdf: survey inviting participants to enroll in the study. We collect demographic data and participants' authorization to access their public Tweet posts Demographic_Survey_answers.xlsx: participants' demographic survey answers ibf_pt_br.doc: the Portuguese version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) instrument to infer participants' Big Five polarity traits ibf_answers.xlsx: participantes' and psychologists' answers for BFI

We have removed from dataset any sensible data to protect participants' privacy and anonymity. We have removed from demographic survey answers any sensible data to protect participants' privacy and anonymity.

Internet Speed in France increased to 10756.57 KBps in the first quarter of 2017 from 10015.55 KBps in the fourth quarter of 2016. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for FranceInternet Speed.