As of January 2025, monthly active users of Telegram accounted for over ** percent of the global population, marking an increase from the previous year. In total, *** million people used Telegram on average per month.

India was the leading market of Telegram by app downloads. Throughout 2024, Indian users installed the messaging app approximately 100 million times. Russia ranked second, with over 38.4 million downloads over the observed period, while U.S. users installed the app 38.2 million times. Brazil recorded the largest number of downloads among Latin American countries. France and Germany were the leading markets in Western Europe. Telegram usage in India Telegram had the fourth-highest penetration rate among social media platforms in India, following WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. In the third quarter of 2023, more than 58 percent of Indian active social media users reported having used Telegram over the past month. However, user engagement on Telegram in India was significantly lower than on other major networks. On average, Indian users spent 2.3 hours per month on the platform in 2021, which was 10 times shorter than on WhatsApp. Growing popularity of Telegram As of July 2024, Telegram had 950 million active users around the globe, having multiplied its audience tenfold since December 2014. Telegram recorded a sharp increase in global downloads in the first quarter of 2021, when WhatsApp, its competitor owned by Meta, updated its privacy policy. In March 2022, Telegram further increased its popularity in Russia after Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram were banned in the country. The number of daily active users (DAU) of Telegram nationwide grew by 15 percent between January and March 2022.

Between the end of January and mid-March, 2022, the number of daily active users (DAU) of Signal in Ukraine increased by 184 percent. By comparison, Signal DAU in Russia increased by 81 percent during the same period. While Telegram amassed over 950 thousand downloads from users in Ukraine between the end of February and March 20, 2022, the app saw an increase of approximately nine percent DAU in the examined period.

India was Telegram's largest market as of 2022. Between January and April of that year, the average number of monthly active users of that messaging app in India stood at nearly 87 million. Furthermore, nearly 16 million people in Brazil used Telegram on average per month. MAU of Telegram in the United States was close to 11 million over the course of 2022.

During a survey conducted in early 2025, ** percent of respondents who had Telegram installed on their phones said they used the app every day, down from ** percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, ** percent of interviewees used Telegram a few times per week. The number of Telegram users worldwide grew almost four times between 2018 and 2022.

The Telegram channel of Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and the country's former president, had the most views per post on average in Russia in January 2025, at approximately 1.8 million. The channel of Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Russian State Duma, ranked fourth. How do Telegram channels work? Besides one-to-one and group chats, Telegram offers users an option to post messages publicly on their own channels, which their subscribers can follow. Channels can be used for sharing information, as sales platforms, or to conduct polls, among other purposes. For example, Topor Live, one of the most-subscribed Telegram channels in Russia, operates as a news platform. Telegram channels can be managed anonymously, which can make it difficult for authorities to identify the authors. Telegram usage in Russia since the war in Ukraine After Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram were blocked in Russia in February and March 2022, social media users switched to other networks, such as Telegram and VK. In the first month of the ban, Telegram’s Russian-speaking audience increased by 23 percent. Telegram was among the most-downloaded apps in the country in March 2022. Over 42 million Russian users accessed Telegram on average daily in August 2022.

Nigeria had the largest share of internet users aged 16 to 64 years who used Telegram among presented African countries, at approximately ** percent in the third quarter of 2022. Closely following was Egypt, where the penetration rate of Telegram reached nearly ** percent.

During the third quarter of 2024, Telegram was downloaded approximately 760,000 times through the Apple App Store and almost 1.3 million times on the Google Play Store by users in France. Telegram experienced a peak in downloads from both Android and iOS devices in January 2021, due to users' negative reception of the WhatsApp privacy policy update released globally during that month. During the second quarter of 2022 Telegram users increased to 700 million monthly active worldwide, as the platform launched its first direct monetization program.

Over 13 million people in Kazakhstan used WhatsApp in 2022. That was nearly eight million people more than the number of users on the second-leading messenger platform in the country, Telegram. The majority of WhatsApp users in Kazakhstan were aged 25 to 34 years.

Nearly 91.2 million people used the social media platform VKontakte in Russia each month on average in the fourth quarter of 2024. The number of monthly active users (MAU) of VKontakte in the country saw an increase over the observed period.

In March 2022, Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro had most-subscribed Telegram channel in Brazil (Jair M. Bolsonaro 1) with around 1.23 million subscribers in the platform. The official channel for tips on Telegram followed in second place with around half the number of the followers of the president's channel. Telegram is used by more than 67 percent of Brazilians for exchanging text messages and accessing channels, the last as an exclusive feature to the app when compared to other messengers in Brazil.

Challenging Meta's hegemony Although WhatsApp is used by more than 90 percent of Brazilian internet users, Telegram is now present on 60 percent of the smartphones in the country, turning it into a direct competitor against the Meta-owned messenger and other platforms. Used by around 55 percent of the Brazil's internet users, Telegram generated around 6.6 million downloads in Brazil during the second quarter of 2022, one of the highest download figures registered after a peak of 12.8 million downloads in the first quarter of 2021.

Elections and disinformation After a court order from the Brazilian Supreme Court that almost suspended the app, Telegram has stated that would monitor its 100 biggest channels to combat the spread of fake news during the general elections in the country. Although the list was kept under investigation secrecy, the platform informed that these channels represent more than 95 percent of all the views in the country.

With the turmoil expected for the upcoming general election in Brazil in October 2022, around 81 percent of respondents of a March 2022 survey in Brazil claimed that social media platforms and messaging apps should remove fake news content, while more than half of those agreed that messaging apps should be taken down if they disobeyed a court order to avoid the spread of such content. The polarized political atmosphere in Brazil also made users of several social media stop talking about politics on these platforms.

In 2024, the largest number of VK app downloads was recorded in Russia, at over 11 million. Thailand was the second-leading market of the social media app, with more than 2.2 million downloads over the same period. VK is strongly present in Russian-speaking regions and neighboring countries. The app offers a social network, known in Russian as VKontakte, a messenger, music streaming, and other services of the VK company. VK in the Russian social media landscape VK has solidified its position as a major social network in Russia, used by over 70 percent of the population aged 16 to 64 each month. Only the messengers WhatsApp and Telegram recorded a higher reach. VK's monthly active user base in the country reached nearly 88 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, demonstrating consistent growth. Moreover, over 54 million Russians used the platform via mobile devices daily. The platform's growth has been particularly notable since 2022 following the exit of several major Western social networks from the Russian market. VKontakte user demographics Women represent the largest share of VK users in Russia, at nearly 63 percent as of October 2024. The social media platform attracts a diverse age range, with the biggest portion of users aged 35 to 44, followed closely by the 25-34 age group.

As of May 2022, about **** percent of respondents in Malaysia stated that their favorite communication application was Whatsapp. Meanwhile, approximately **** percent of respondents stated that they used Telegram, the second most popular communication app in the country.

In August 2025, Meta-owned chat and communication app WhatsApp was the most downloaded mobile messenger app worldwide, with over 35 million downloads. Telegram ranked second with over 28 million downloads, while Mobile social and communication app Snapchat ranked third with almost 27 million download worldwide.

This dataset comprises 195,567 message IDs shared by 6,802 unique Telegram users on 25 pro-Bolsonaro public Telegram groups during August 2022, when the presidential campaign for the 2022 Brazilian elections started.

The message ID provided by Telegram API is unique only for the group or channel where it was posted. For this reason, the dataset provides the message ID and the group username (@).

More than three-quarters of the Russian online population aged 16 years and older used the Telegram messenger, thus making it the most-used social media platform among those listed in the ranking. WhatsApp ranked second, with a penetration rate of nearly 74 percent, followed by VK and TikTok. Social media usage in Russia In 2024, the daily time spent on social media in Russia was recorded at roughly two hours and 20 minutes per user on average. After Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) were blocked in Russia at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022, a significant increase in activity was recorded on VK and Telegram. For example, the daily audience on VK increased by almost nine percent, while the number of friends requests and feed views grew by 250 percent and 25 percent, respectively. YouTube From the global perspective, YouTube ranked second after Facebook, which remained the leading social media platform with about three billion active users. The U.S.-based channel MrBeast had the highest number of subscribers on YouTube with around 343 million as of January 2025. India-based T-Series followed with 284 million subscribers as of that month.

In March 2025, around three-quarters of respondents in Russia used WhatsApp, which was the largest share compared to other messenger applications. The share of Russians who used Telegram reached 57 percent, while the third-most popular messenger was VKontakte Messenger. Messenger use in Russia Almost 80 percent of Russians used instant messaging platforms in 2024, as compared to 84 percent in Brazil and 71 percent in the United Kingdom (UK). Among internet users, the share of online chat and messenger services consumers in Russia stood at 94.5 percent, same as the global average. WhatsApp in Russia While other social media platforms by Meta Platforms are banned in Russia, WhatsApp can be used in the country. Users aged 25 to 44 years spent the most time on the messenger in the first seven months of 2024. The penetration rate of WhatsApp in Russia stood at around 84 percent as of 2022, which was lower than in Brazil and Italy, but higher than in Sweden and Australia.

According to a report conducted in 2022, Telegram posts that mentioned "nuclear" generated more reactions than average. In September 2022, posts containing the term on Anti-war and neutral Telegram channels saw an increase in reactions of 38.95 percent when compared to an average post. Additionally, in September 2022, posts on Pro-Russian Telegram channels in Ukraine containing "nuclear" saw an increase in reactions of 29.44 percent.

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.

Research from AppMagic suggested that Meta continued to dominate the Australian social media landscape by owning two most downloaded social media apps as of May 2025. The number of Facebook downloads amounted to around ***** thousand, followed by Threads, Telegram, and Snapchat. Facebook: The industry giant With over ***** billion monthly active users worldwide as of January 2024, Facebook leads the industry as the most popular social network platform. Besides its core product under the same name, Facebook also owns several major social network services, namely WhatsApp, Instagram, and its standalone instant messaging service, Messenger, each with more than *** billion active users. The number of Australia-based Facebook users is estimated to decrease to around ** million over the next few years, but still accounting for approximately ********** of Australia’s total population. More than just social networking While its business focus lies on private messaging, Facebook seems to have more to offer. Facebook, including Messenger, and Instagram have remained the most widely used platforms for social commerce among Australian online shoppers. Facebook has also been by far the most popular social media channel among small and medium-sized businesses in Australia. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, apart from television and online newspaper, many Australians have turned to Facebook as their daily source of news.