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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 United Kingdom

United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 250-999 Employees data was reported at 78.100 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 75.900 % for 2015. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 250-999 Employees data is updated yearly, averaging 71.700 % from Dec 2012 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 78.100 % in 2016 and a record low of 63.400 % in 2012. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: 250-999 Employees data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.S039: E Commerce: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media: By Size of Business.

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.

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).

United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks data was reported at 60.300 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 56.500 % for 2015. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks data is updated yearly, averaging 51.200 % from Dec 2012 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 60.300 % in 2016 and a record low of 42.200 % in 2013. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.S040: E Commerce: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media: By Industry.

United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Transport & Storage data was reported at 39.200 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 35.400 % for 2015. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Transport & Storage data is updated yearly, averaging 35.400 % from Dec 2012 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 39.200 % in 2016 and a record low of 25.500 % in 2012. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Transport & Storage data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.S040: E Commerce: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media: By Industry.

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.

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.

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.

United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Other Services data was reported at 65.500 % in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 58.400 % for 2015. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Other Services data is updated yearly, averaging 58.400 % from Dec 2012 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 65.500 % in 2016 and a record low of 48.400 % in 2013. United Kingdom E Commerce: Social Networks: Other Services data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office for National Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.S040: E Commerce: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media: By Industry.

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.

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

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

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