As of October 2025, the video-sharing platform YouTube had approximately 2.58 billion users worldwide. During the same period, an estimated 53 percent of its global audience were male.

On June 17, 2016, Korean education brand Pinkfong released their video "Baby Shark Dance", and the rest is history. In January 2021, Baby Shark Dance became the first YouTube video to surpass 10 billion views, after snatching the crown of most-viewed YouTube video of all time from the former record holder "Despacito" one year before. "Baby Shark Dance" currently has over 15 billion lifetime views on YouTube. Music videos on YouTube “Baby Shark Dance” might be the current record-holder in terms of total views, but Korean artist Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video remained on the top spot for longest (1,689 days or 4.6 years) before ceding its spot to its successor. With figures like these, it comes as little surprise that the majority of the most popular videos on YouTube are music videos. Since 2010, all but one the most-viewed videos on YouTube have been music videos, signifying the platform’s shift in focus from funny, viral videos to professionally produced content. As of 2022, about 40 percent of the U.S. digital music audience uses YouTube Music. Popular video content on YouTube Music fans are also highly engaged audiences and it is not uncommon for music videos to garner significant amounts of traffic within the first 24 hours of release. Other popular types of videos that generate lots of views after their first release are movie trailers, especially superhero movies related to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The first official trailer for the upcoming film “Avengers: Endgame” generated 289 million views within the first 24 hours of release, while the movie trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home generated over 355 views on the first day from release, making it the most viral movie trailer.

As of February 2025, the United States was the region with the largest TikTok audience by far, with almost ****** million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around ***** million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost ***** million users on TikTok watching short-videos. From Reels to Shorts: social short video takes the internet Between 2021 and 2022 some of the most popular social media platforms have been adding short-video features on the heels of TikTok’s popularity. YouTube Shorts, which rolled out to the global market in June 2021, reached *** billion monthly active logged-in users in 2023. In comparison, Instagram’s short-video format Reels, which launched in August 2020, presented a higher view rate than regular videos on the platform between June 2021 and June 2022, as well as a higher likes rate than other content types on Instagram. TikTok business model TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, along with the short-video app Douyin (TikTok’s version for the Chinese market), video platform Xigua, and popular news app Toutiao. While the products intended for domestic market consumption operate in the Chinese digital ecosystem and have a plurality of established monetization methods such as a live-shopping events hosted by famous influencers, TikTok’s main revenue stream comes from online advertising. In 2022, TikTok was estimated to have generated around **** billion U.S. dollars worldwide via online advertising.

With barely 10 seconds and 61 million likes, Bella Poach's lip syncing "M to the B" by Millie B was the most engaging video on TikTok as of March 2023. Bella Poarch, who as of the beginning of 2023 was the third-most followed creator on the popular social video platform, rose to popularity as a singer and content creators since opening a TikTok account in January 2020. Second ranked "dancing in front of the bathroom mirror," by user @jamie32bsh generated almost 52 million likes between its upload time - January 2022 and March 2023.

Instagram’s most popular post

              As of April 2024, the most popular post on Instagram was Lionel Messi and his teammates after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup with Argentina, posted by the account @leomessi. Messi's post, which racked up over 61 million likes within a day, knocked off the reigning post, which was 'Photo of an Egg'. Originally posted in January 2021, 'Photo of an Egg' surpassed the world’s most popular Instagram post at that time, which was a photo by Kylie Jenner’s daughter totaling 18 million likes.
              After several cryptic posts published by the account, World Record Egg revealed itself to be a part of a mental health campaign aimed at the pressures of social media use.

              Instagram’s most popular accounts

              As of April 2024, the official Instagram account @instagram had the most followers of any account on the platform, with 672 million followers. Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) was the most followed individual with 628 million followers, while Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) was the most followed woman on the platform with 429 million. Additionally, Inter Miami CF striker Lionel Messi (@leomessi) had a total of 502 million. Celebrities such as The Rock, Kylie Jenner, and Ariana Grande all had over 380 million followers each.

              Instagram influencers

              In the United States, the leading content category of Instagram influencers was lifestyle, with 15.25 percent of influencers creating lifestyle content in 2021. Music ranked in second place with 10.96 percent, followed by family with 8.24 percent. Having a large audience can be very lucrative: Instagram influencers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom with over 90,000 followers made around 1,221 US dollars per post.

              Instagram around the globe

              Instagram’s worldwide popularity continues to grow, and India is the leading country in terms of number of users, with over 362.9 million users as of January 2024. The United States had 169.65 million Instagram users and Brazil had 134.6 million users. The social media platform was also very popular in Indonesia and Turkey, with 100.9 and 57.1, respectively. As of January 2024, Instagram was the fourth most popular social network in the world, behind Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp.

In 2023, it was estimated that social forum and news aggregator Reddit saw over 26.5 million U.S. dollars in revenues from global paying users with an annual subscription. A premium Reddit subscription comes with an ad-free environment, as well as the possibility to join premium subreddits such as r/lounge. In 2022, Reddit counted approximately 530 thousand paying users. By 2026, Reddit annual subscription revenues are estimated to bring in 36.5 million U.S. dollars in revenues.

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 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.

During a 2024 survey among marketers worldwide, approximately 83 percent selected increased exposure as a benefit of social media marketing. Increased traffic followed, mentioned by 73 percent of the respondents, while 65 percent cited generated leads.

              The multibillion-dollar social media ad industry

              Between 2019 – the last year before the pandemic – and 2024, global social media advertising spending skyrocketed by 140 percent, surpassing an estimated 230 billion U.S. dollars in the latter year. That figure was forecast to increase by nearly 50 percent by the end of the decade, exceeding 345 billion dollars in 2029. As of 2024, the social media networks with the most monthly active users were Facebook, with over three billion, and YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion.

              Pros and cons of GenAI for social media marketing

              According to another 2024 survey, generative artificial intelligence's (GenAI) leading benefits for social media marketing according to professionals worldwide included increased efficiency and easier idea generation. The third place was a tie between increased content production and enhanced creativity. All those advantages were cited by between 33 and 38 percent of the interviewees. As for GenAI's top challenges for global social media marketing,
              maintaining authenticity and the value of human creativity ranked first, mentioned by 43 and 40 percent of the respondents, respectively. Another 35 percent deemed ensuring the content resonates as an obstacle.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, TikTok generated around 186 million downloads from users worldwide. Initially launched in China first by ByteDance as Douyin, the short-video format was popularized by TikTok and took over the global social media environment in 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok downloads peaked at over 313.5 million worldwide, up by 62.3 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019.

              TikTok interactions: is there a magic formula for content success?

              In 2024, TikTok registered an engagement rate of approximately 4.64 percent on video content hosted on its platform. During the same examined year, the social video app recorded over 1,100 interactions on average. These interactions were primarily composed of likes, while only recording less than 20 comments per piece of content on average in 2024.
              The platform has been actively monitoring the issue of fake interactions, as it removed around 236 million fake likes during the first quarter of 2024. Though there is no secret formula to get the maximum of these metrics, recommended video length can possibly contribute to the success of content on TikTok.
              It was recommended that tiny TikTok accounts with up to 500 followers post videos that are around 2.6 minutes long as of the first quarter of 2024. While, the ideal video duration for huge TikTok accounts with over 50,000 followers was 7.28 minutes. The average length of TikTok videos posted by the creators in 2024 was around 43 seconds.

              What’s trending on TikTok Shop?

              Since its launch in September 2023, TikTok Shop has become one of the most popular online shopping platforms, offering consumers a wide variety of products. In 2023, TikTok shops featuring beauty and personal care items sold over 370 million products worldwide.
              TikTok shops featuring womenswear and underwear, as well as food and beverages, followed with 285 and 138 million products sold, respectively. Similarly, in the United States market, health and beauty products were the most-selling items,
              accounting for 85 percent of sales made via the TikTok Shop feature during the first month of its launch. In 2023, Indonesia was the market with the largest number of TikTok Shops, hosting over 20 percent of all TikTok Shops. Thailand and Vietnam followed with 18.29 and 17.54 percent of the total shops listed on the famous short video platform, respectively.

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.

MrBeast wächst unaufhörlich: Der YouTube-Kanal von MrBeast zählte Anfang Oktober 2025 rund 443 Millionen Abonnent:innen. Im Vorjahresmonat lag die Zahl noch bei 319 Millionen Abonnent:innen. Hinter dem YouTube-Channel steckt der US-Amerikaner Jimmy Donaldson. In jungen Jahren veröffentlichte er auf seinem Youtube-Kanal sogenannte Let's Play's - mittlerweile ist Donaldson bekannt für Challenges, in denen er den Teilnehmenden hohe Summen an Geld, Sportwagen oder gar eine Insel als Gewinn in Aussicht stellt, sowie hohe Geldsummen an Fremde verschenkt. Forbes stufte MrBeast im Jahr 2024 als den bestverdienden Youtuber weltweit ein. MrBeast - Größter YouTube-Channel weltweit MrBeast gilt seit Juni 2024 zudem als der meistabonnierte YouTuber-Kanal weltweit. Er löste das dahinter folgende, indische Musiklabel T-Series, das auch Filme produziert, ab. Es wurde 1983 gegründet und zeigt bei YouTube hauptsächlich Musikvideos und Filmtrailer. T-Series kam zuletzt auf über 300 Millionen Abonnenten. Rang drei belegte Cocomelon, ein Kanal, der sich auf Kinderlieder mit 3D-Animationen spezialisiert hat. Sony Entertainment Television India, ein indischer Pay-TV-Kanal auf Hindi, lag auf dem vierten Platz. Rang fünf belegte der Kanal Vlad and Niki. PewDiePie hatte als erste Einzelperson im August 2019 die 100-Millionen-Marke erreicht. Meistgesehene YouTube-Videos Im Ranking der meistgesehenen YouTube-Videos aller Zeiten liegt das Musikvideo "Baby Shark Dance" von Pinkfong Kids' Songs & Stories mit rund 15 Milliarden Views auf dem ersten Platz (Stand: Mai 2025). Auch bei dem Video mit den zweitmeisten Views handelt es sich um ein Musikvideo: Der Clip zu dem Song "Despacito" von Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee kam auf mehr als 8 Milliarden Views.

Cristiano Ronaldo has one of the most popular Instagram accounts as of April 2024.

              The Portuguese footballer is the most-followed person on the photo sharing app platform with 628 million followers. Instagram's own account was ranked first with roughly 672 million followers.

              How popular is Instagram?

              Instagram is a photo-sharing social networking service that enables users to take pictures and edit them with filters. The platform allows users to post and share their images online and directly with their friends and followers on the social network. The cross-platform app reached one billion monthly active users in mid-2018. In 2020, there were over 114 million Instagram users in the United States and experts project this figure to surpass 127 million users in 2023.

              Who uses Instagram?

              Instagram audiences are predominantly young – recent data states that almost 60 percent of U.S. Instagram users are aged 34 years or younger. Fall 2020 data reveals that Instagram is also one of the most popular social media for teens and one of the social networks with the biggest reach among teens in the United States.

              Celebrity influencers on Instagram
              Many celebrities and athletes are brand spokespeople and generate additional income with social media advertising and sponsored content. Unsurprisingly, Ronaldo ranked first again, as the average media value of one of his Instagram posts was 985,441 U.S. dollars.

Which county has the most Facebook users?

              There are more than 378 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. To put this into context, if India’s Facebook audience were a country then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. Apart from India, there are several other markets with more than 100 million Facebook users each: The United States, Indonesia, and Brazil with 193.8 million, 119.05 million, and 112.55 million Facebook users respectively.

              Facebook – the most used social media

              Meta, the company that was previously called Facebook, owns four of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. As of the third quarter of 2021, there were around 3,5 billion cumulative monthly users of the company’s products worldwide. With around 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media worldwide. With an audience of this scale, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated through advertising.

              Facebook usage by device
              As of July 2021, it was found that 98.5 percent of active users accessed their Facebook account from mobile devices. In fact, almost 81.8 percent of Facebook audiences worldwide access the platform only via mobile phone. Facebook is not only available through mobile browser as the company has published several mobile apps for users to access their products and services. As of the third quarter 2021, the four core Meta products were leading the ranking of most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with WhatsApp amassing approximately six billion downloads.

As of April 2024, almost 32 percent of global Instagram audiences were aged between 18 and 24 years, and 30.6 percent of users were aged between 25 and 34 years. Overall, 16 percent of users belonged to the 35 to 44 year age group.

              Instagram users

              With roughly one billion monthly active users, Instagram belongs to the most popular social networks worldwide. The social photo sharing app is especially popular in India and in the United States, which have respectively 362.9 million and 169.7 million Instagram users each.

              Instagram features

              One of the most popular features of Instagram is Stories. Users can post photos and videos to their Stories stream and the content is live for others to view for 24 hours before it disappears. In January 2019, the company reported that there were 500 million daily active Instagram Stories users. Instagram Stories directly competes with Snapchat, another photo sharing app that initially became famous due to it’s “vanishing photos” feature.
              As of the second quarter of 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users.

American online streamer and vtuber Hasan Piker, better known by his Twitch channel's name HasanAbi was reported to have engaged Twitch users for approximately seven million hours in July 2024. The political science graduate created his Twitch channel in 2018, starting to live stream in the category "Just Chatting" and quickly becoming one of the most popular streamers creating political content on the platform.

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).

During the fourth quarter 2024, approximately 20.6 million TikTok accounts were removed from the platform due to suspicion of being operated by users under the age of 13. During the last measured period, around 185 million fake accounts were removed from fake accounts removed from TikTok.

How many paid subscribers does Spotify have? As of the second quarter of 2025, Spotify had 276 million premium subscribers worldwide, up from 246 million in the corresponding quarter of 2024. Spotify’s subscriber base has increased dramatically in the last few years and has more than doubled since early 2019. Spotify and competitors Spotify is a music streaming service originally founded in 2006 in Sweden. The platform can be used from various devices and allows users to browse through a catalog of music licensed through multiple record labels, as well as create and share playlists with other users. Additionally, listeners are able to enjoy music for free with advertisements or are also given the option to purchase a subscription to allow for unlimited ad-free music streaming. Spotify’s largest competitors are Pandora, a company that offers a similar service and remains popular in the United States, and Apple Music, which was launched in 2015. While Pandora was once among the highest-grossing music apps in the Apple App Store, recent rankings show that global services like QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music, and YouTube Music now generate higher monthly revenues.Users can also register Spotify accounts using Facebook directly through the website using an app. This enables them to connect with other Facebook friends and explore their music tastes and playlists. Spotify is a popular source for keeping up-to-date with music, and the ability to enjoy Spotify anywhere at any time allows consumers to shape their music consumption around their lifestyles and preferences.

According to a survey released in May 2023, B2B marketers considered Facebook the social media channel with the highest return on investment (ROI). The platform was mentioned by 22 percent of respondents. Instagram, TikTok and YouTube tied in second, each cited by 16 percent of the respondents.