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Social media has been around since 1997.
But it wasn’t until 2004 that social media really began to take off. Now there are 4.26 billion people that use social media worldwide.
That’s more than half of the total world population!
The rapid growth in social media usage has completely changed the way we live and interact with each other.
But is this growth starting to slow?
I’ve compiled a list of the latest social media user statistics showing just how big social media has become and where it’s likely to go in the future.
What Will I Learn?
Billions of people rely on social media every day.
There are hundreds of social media sites that vary in size and function.
These are the key social media statistics that you need to know:
As you can see, social media is a big part of our daily lives. But is demand growing or slowing down?
Time on social media is increasing.
The average time spent on social media increased by 2 minutes in 2021 compared with 2020. While this doesn’t sound like much – when you consider the number of people on social media, it adds up to a lot of extra usage.
Which countries spent the most and least time on social media?
Most North Koreans don’t have access to the internet, let alone social media. The North Korean Government does have a large social media account on Twitter.
The daily average worldwide social media usage is now 2 hours and 27 minutes.
The United States dips below that, with an average of 2 hours and 14 minutes spent on social media daily.
When you break this data down by age demographic, the average time spent each day on social media changes significantly:
| Age Group | Average Daily Time Spent On Social Media |
|---|---|
| 16 to 24 | 3 hours and 1 minute |
| 25 to 34 | 2 hours and 37 minutes |
| 35 to 44 | 2 hours and 4 minutes |
| 45 to 54 | 1 hour and 39 minutes |
| 55 to 64 | 1 hour and 13 minutes |
Interestingly when you break it down further by gender, men aged 20 to 29 spend the most time on social media.
For women, those aged 16 to 24 years old spend the most time on social media with an average of 3 hours and 18 minutes per day.
This is only slightly above the average when you consider both genders.
How many social media platforms do people visit?
The average user will visit 7.5 social media platforms each month. So all of that time spent on social media is divided into multiple platforms.
Not one specific platform completely dominates the market.
People generally use social media for three main reasons:
A recent case study estimates that the average person will spend about 5 years and 4 months of their life on social media.
That’s more time than they will spend eating and drinking!
But maybe more shocking than that is…
7.3% of the average person’s life will be spent only on social media.
Advertising is an important part of social media.
Why?
Because that’s how most social media platforms make money. It’s also a good opportunity for businesses to reach their target customers with relevant ads.
So how much do businesses spend on ads?
Global ad spend were expected to reach over $134 billion in 2022. This means that it has increased by over 17% yearly.
One of the biggest drivers of this growth is video.
Ad spend on video alone is expected to grow by 20.1% to 24.35 billion.
With the rise of video-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok, videos are becoming more popular. Even Instagram has switched from images to more videos.
Digital marketing statistics show that video ads also tend to perform better for businesses taking advantage of advertising on social media platforms.
But consumers are more worried about their privacy than anything else.
52% of social media users say that when a platform does a good job of protecting their privacy and data, it significantly impacts their decision to interact with ads on the platform.
The more a social media site protects its users, the better results advertisers can get.
Facebook is the largest social media network on the planet.
Despite a lot of recent bad press, Facebook has continued to grow as a platform worldwide. These are the latest social media user statistics about Facebook.
How many users does Facebook have?
Facebook is fast approaching 3 billion monthly active users. That’s about 36% of the world’s entire population that log in and use Facebook at least once a month.
When you break it down by internet users, it’s even more:
The bottom line here is – don’t believe everything that you read.
Facebook continues to grow in new users and maintain strong engagement in its current user base.
Facebook has a far bigger male user base than female.
56.5% of Facebook users worldwide are male. This is in direct contrast to only 43.5% of Facebook being female.
| Gender | Facebook Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 56.5% |
| Female | 43.5% |
Even more than that, almost 20% of Facebook’s worldwide users are men aged 24-34. This is by far the biggest user demographic on the Facebook platform.
Where Facebook is struggling the most is younger females.
Women aged 13-17 are Facebook’s smallest user demographic. This user statistic is almost the same in every single country with only a few exceptions.
In the United States, women aged 25-34 are the largest and most active group of users on Facebook. It seems that Facebook still has a solid user base of young adults despite experts predicting they would leave the platform.
India has the most Facebook users worldwide with 349 million monthly active users. This is followed by the US with about 194 million monthly active users.
Facebook isn’t only the biggest platform in the world…
It’s also one of the most used.
The average Facebook user spends about 19.6 per month on Facebook every month. This works out to be about 39 minutes per day.
The US dips slightly below this with the average Facebook user in the United States spending about 34.6 minutes per day on the platform.
Facebook has also experienced continuous growth in site traffic. Facebook has grown by 3% year over year and now gets about 25.5 billion visits per month.
That’s about 10,000 visits every single second.
Only 0.7% of users on Facebook are unique to the platform. Just over 50% of Facebook users also use Twitter.
Although the platforms differ in many ways, there are also a lot of fundamental similarities that users enjoy on both social media sites.
The Facebook brand alone is valued at $101.6 billion. This is primarily due to the brand recognition they have from billions of people worldwide.
There aren’t many brands that can say that.
But Facebook also benefits other brands and businesses. 66% of Facebook users visit a local business page at least once weekly.
One-third of Facebook’s users made a purchase directly from or on the platform in 2021.
That number is expected to grow significantly over the next few years and will only increase the value of the Facebook brand.
Instagram is the fourth biggest social media platform in the world by users.
It was purchased by Facebook (now Meta) in 2012 for a record-setting $1 billion. Since then it has exploded in popularity with billions of users worldwide.
Here are the social media user statistics you need to know about Instagram.
Instagram now has over 1.5 billion users on the platform.
This makes it about half the size of Facebook. The average Instagram user spends about 11.2 hours per month on the platform and approximately 23 minutes per day.
Turkey has the highest monthly usage with Turkish Instagram users spending an average of 20.2 hours per month on the platform.
South Korea has the lowest amount of time spent on the platform with an average of only 5.8 hours per month.
The difference between usage on a country-by-country basis is significant.
Instagram has rapidly evolved over the last 5 years, making tons of changes/updates to the platform.
This has helped them expand their user base while maintaining a loyal following.
The most significant cohorts of users on Instagram are aged 25 – 34.
Instagram is by far Gen Z’s favourite social media platform and is likely to maintain them as loyal users even as they get older.
What percentage of men and women use Instagram?
Like Facebook, more men use Instagram than Women, but the gap is not nearly as big.
| Gender | Instagram Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 51.8% |
| Female | 48.2% |
Men account for 51.8% of Instagram’s audience and women make up 49.3%. You can see that the platform is far more balanced in terms of gender use.
Adults are the most engaged audience on Instagram.
59% of US adults use Instagram daily.
Instagram originally started out as the social media platform for images. It has now evolved into a video-heavy platform. 91% of active Instagram users say they watch videos on the platform on a weekly basis.
Instagram also drives conversions.
92% of users say that they have made a purchase on Instagram after seeing a product advertised.
There is a strong sense of “social selling” where people on Instagram are happy to be marketed to and engage with ads – particularly video ads.
And Instagram gets a significant amount of reach with ads as well.
Instagram ads reach about 30% of all internet users worldwide. This is good news for business owners looking to expand their current customer base.
Ads are most likely to reach men and women between the ages of 18 to 34. If this is your demographic…
Instagram could be the place to advertise your products and services.
Branding is also incredibly effective on Instagram.
90% of Instagram users follow businesses on the platform.
What’s more?
2 in 3 people say that Instagram helps them positively connect with brands. Part of the reason for this is Instagram Stories.
50% of Instagram users say they’ve clicked through to a brand’s website after seeing one of their Stories.
Stories create an opportunity for brands to communicate more directly with potential customers.
This is why Instagram is working on developing Stories to be more interactive.
50% of people are also more interested in a brand after seeing an ad on Instagram.
These user statistics show that people trust the platform as a way to have more authentic relationships with the brands they love.
Twitter is a very niche social media platform.
It’s not designed for everyone. But Twitter users love the platform and they are very loyal to it. Here are all the social media user statistics you need to know about Twitter.
The average Twitter user spends 5.1 hours per month on the platform.
This is about half of what most users spend on Instagram and Facebook. It works out to be about 10 minutes per day.
Twitter is most popular with millennials and Gen-Z. The unique platform doesn’t always feel intuitive so it has been harder for Twitter to acquire new users quickly.
Looking specifically at the United States – 22% of all Americans use Twitter.
Twitter is certainly much more popular in the US than in any other country worldwide. Interestingly Democrats are far more likely to use Twitter than Republicans.
What’s the main demographic of Twitter users?
38.5% of Twitter users are aged 25-34 and make up the biggest age group on the platform. Only 6.6% of Twitter users are aged 13-17.
Twitter has struggled to compete with other social media platforms with younger social media users.
Most of Twitter’s users are actually male. Here’s the breakdown of users by gender looks like:
| Gender | Twitter Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 70.4% |
| Female | 29.6% |
You can see that males make up more than ⅔ of all users with 70.4% of the platform being male. Women account for just 29.6% of Twitter’s entire audience.
This is one of the most unbalanced social media platforms in terms of gender.
Twitter is where people go to have conversations and catch up on the latest news.
33% of Americans who use Twitter have a college degree. Whatever your topic or area of interest, you’ll likely find others to talk with on Twitter.
There is a strong correlation between Twitter Users and TikTok users.
Almost 55% of regular Twitter users also use TikTok.
The number of Twitter users is currently at 237 million daily monetisable active users. This means people who use Twitter daily can potentially be shown ads (monetised).
The total number of registered Twitter users worldwide now exceeds 329 million and is expected to reach 340 million by the end of 2024.
Twitter user statistics show a varying degree of how often users login to the platform. Here’s what it looks like:
| How Often Twitter Users Login To Twitter | Percentage of Users |
|---|---|
| Daily | 52% |
| Weekly | 84% |
| Monthly | 96% |
These stats show that Twitter has a very engaged audience.
Most social media platforms measure their user engagement by monthly active users. In this case, 96% of all Twitter users are on the platform at least once per month.
This is a very high number!
Twitter has often come under fire because of their ads platform.
They have not been able to create a powerful ad platform that delivers results like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
But not all of this is bad for business on Twitter.
In fact, Twitter offers good organic reach for brands and posts tend to get far more engagement than other platforms like Facebook.
237 million of Twitter’s daily active users can be monetised through ads. They have the audience available and it’s up to marketers to create better advertisements.
You can’t just rely on the algorithm to do it for you.
Advertising revenue on Twitter exceeded $1.41 billion in 2021. This was an annual increase of 22% year over year.
Twitter has started to work more on its advertising platform and algorithm to generate more revenue for the company.
YouTube is the second most popular social media site behind Facebook.
But YouTube is also considered a search engine.
That means that YouTube is also the second biggest search engine behind Google. It has become a powerhouse platform with billions of loyal users.
Here are the latest social media user statistics from YouTube.
Although YouTube might be the second biggest social media site – it gets the most use.
The platform boasts an average of 23.7 hours per month spent by users.
This means people spend the most time on YouTube monthly compared to any other social networking channel.
YouTube has cemented itself as “THE” video platform.
A massive 81% of Americans use YouTube regularly. 39% of American adults say that they visit YouTube several times per day.
While most social platforms are happy if they can get people to use their site daily – YouTube gets its audience using the platform multiple times daily!
Some experts even predict that YouTube is only just getting started. Younger generations have started watching YouTube instead of watching TV.
There is a large possibility that YouTube could fully replace TV in the future.
99% of YouTube users regularly use another social media platform. So while YouTube will continue to dominate the video space, it is not a stand-alone social platform for users.
Who are the biggest consumers of YouTube?
Short answer – Children.
80% of parents say that their children under the age of 11 watch YouTube regularly. The point here is YouTube attracts a lot of very young users which is not common on other social channels.
What about gender?
| Gender | YouTube Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 54% |
| Female | 46% |
YouTube has a reasonably balanced user base of both genders with a slight majority of male users. 54% of YouTube users are male and 46% are female.
India has the most YouTube users with 467 million monthly active users. This is followed by the United States at 247 million monthly active users.
Now you know that YouTube is the world’s second most-used social media platform.
But how many visits does the site get?
YouTube gets an average of 14.3 billion total worldwide visits every month.
In other words, it attracts about 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors. That means the average user visits YouTube about 8 to 9 times monthly.
Visitors spend an average of 19 minutes a day on YouTube.
Even more than that…
694,000 hours of video content is streamed on YouTube every minute. That means about 1 billion hours of content is streamed daily on YouTube.
That’s a lot of content being consumed.
The mobile app has become very important for YouTube and its users. Mobile users visit 2x as many pages as desktop users.
The social media platform has realised that it is easier to keep users engaged on their mobile application than if they are on a desktop.
Sports viewership is one of the latest trends on YouTube. Around 90 million people will watch live sports regularly on YouTube by 2025.
YouTube Shorts have also become a big part of the platform to compete with TikTok and Instagram. And it might be working.
YouTube shorts have now been viewed over 5 trillion times.
This has helped continue to ensure that YouTube is the ultimate video social media platform.
YouTube is a great place to promote your brand.
It works for almost any niche and allows you to connect with customers in a different kind of way.
70% of YouTube viewers bought from a brand after seeing it on YouTube. For D2C brands, there is a big opportunity to grow your audience and sales with YouTube.
The YouTube ads platform is also among the most powerful of all social media channels.
Ads can be targeted to users by intent rather than just:
This means that the YouTube ads algorithm can determine who will likely buy and show ads to those people.
Marketers using user intent on the platform have seen a 100% higher lift in purchase intent than when using demographic and interest targeting.
YouTube ads have the potential to reach 2.56 billion monetisable users.
Most people don’t realise that LinkedIn is actually one of the oldest social media sites still around today.
LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and officially launched in 2003.
It wasn’t until 2010 that LinkedIn started to become popular, reaching 70 million active users. Today LinkedIn is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.
And experts predict that their social media growth is just getting started.
LinkedIn now has 875 million users worldwide.
This makes it the 8th most popular social media platform in the world by users. As of March 2022, about 25% of US adults are on LinkedIn today.
What’s more?
Over 15.4 billion unique people have visited LinkedIn through the Q2 of 2022.
LinkedIn has cemented itself as a juggernaut in the social media world. It’s also the most popular professional network available and is used by millions of companies globally for recruitment.
The United States is the biggest user of LinkedIn.
Over 185 million Americans used LinkedIn, meaning about 57% of all Americans have a LinkedIn profile or have used the platform in some capacity.
Hungary has the lowest LinkedIn usage rates of any country worldwide. Only 1 million Hungarians are on the platform.
Which gender uses LinkedIn the most?
There are more male LinkedIn users than females – although it is pretty balanced:
| Gender | LinkedIn Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 52.1% |
| Female | 47.9% |
52.1% of all LinkedIn users are male and 47.9% are female. This is pretty balanced when you compare LinkedIn with other platforms.
Not only that, but…
LinkedIn is a professional social media site.
That means a big part of the platform is based on recruitment (for businesses) and sharing professional content (for job hunters).
To put that in perceptive…
And that’s just the beginning…
52 million people use LinkedIn every week to search for new jobs. LinkedIn has become one of the biggest hubs for both job seekers and recruiters.
The LinkedIn app is also popular with users.
Just over 16% of users on LinkedIn log into the app daily. 48.5% of users log in to the app at least once per month. Although these numbers are lower than other social media platforms, it’s still a significant portion of people.
But the number 1 reason people use LinkedIn is to increase their network.
84% of LinkedIn users said they regularly log in to the platform to grow their professional network.
If LinkedIn is a professional social media network, it makes sense that it is used by brands.
The most-followed brands on LinkedIn are:
Linked has over 57 million companies that are listed on the site with pages for their brand. LinkedIn has also become a popular place for advertisers.
The biggest benefit of LinkedIn is that you can target by job title.
This means you can:
LinkedIn ads reach just over 10% of the entire world’s population, making it a great place to put your products or services in front of the right people.
Snapchat was released in July 2011.
It quickly grew in popularity especially among younger teens.
Snapchat was so popular that Facebook tried to buy Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion which they declined. Since then, Snapchat has become one of the most popular social media sites today.
Here are the latest social media user statistics on Snapchat.
How many users does Snapchat have?
Snapchat now boasts over 319 million daily active users. That means it’s one of the most engaging platforms. Snapchat currently has a total user base of 617 million.
But what’s more impressive is the growth.
Snapchat has had a considerable growth rate of about 20% daily active users over the last five consecutive quarters.
This is impressive for a social media platform that’s more than 10 years old.
23% of US adults use Snapchat, which is more than both Twitter and TikTok.
These stats combined with Snapchat’s growth, show that the social media platform is not done growing yet.
What are the main demographics of Snapchat?
Simple – Millennials and Gen Z.
Snapchat reaches 75% of millennials and Gen Z:
The most popular age group for Snapchat is 18 to 24 by far, making up about 37.6% of their total user base.
Very few Snapchat fans use the platform exclusively.
Because Snapchat is more of a messaging service combined with videos and images, people don’t spend all their time on Snapchat.
It’s a quick check and reply to friends before leaving the platform again.
The average Snapchat user spends just 3 hours per month on the app. This works out to be 6 minutes daily and is far less than the other big social media networks.
But Snapchat is working on keeping its users engaged for longer.
People will spend an average of 7 minutes per day on Snapchat this year.
Snapchat launched 18 New Year’s Eve lenses for 2022, generating more than 7 billion impressions.
Advertising on Snapchat is very different from other platforms.
But Snapchat has been successfully developing its ads platform to better help advertisers. Snapchat’s revenue increased by 64% in 2021, with the social media network generating $4.1 billion in revenue.
That’s a big jump!
The minimum daily budget on Snapchat is just $5, which allows even smaller businesses to advertise.
25 of Snapchat’s Discover Partners reached over 50 million unique Snapchatters worldwide.
Discover is a specific part of the app where you can find the latest news and content from big publishers.
Is it worth advertising on Snapchat?
It’s estimated that Snapchat users hold about $4.4 trillion in spending power.
So if you can combine the right ad with the right kind of products or service, there is definitely money to be made from Snapchat.
In 2021, cosmetics giant MAC built several augmented-reality try-on makeup lenses and launched these on their channel. The results were impressive:
The key for brands on Snapchat is being relevant to the age groups on the platform and creating content that engages them.
TikTok is the latest social media network to make it big.
It was released in September 2016 and has become a powerhouse platform growing faster than any other platform in history. The truth is…
TikTok looks like they are just getting started.
TikTok user statistics show that TikTok has the second highest usage of any platform.
Users spend an average of 19.6 hours per month on TikTok alone. This works out to be approximately 39 minutes per day.
That’s almost double what Facebook gets!
TikTok is very popular in the United States with 20% of US adults using the platform. TikTok downloads via the App Store grew by 6% in January 2022 alone.
As of January 2022, TikTok boasted approximately 29.7 million daily active users on iOS devices worldwide.
This doesn’t include the number of Android users.
The number of monthly active TikTok users is currently 80 million in the US. This is expected to grow to just under 90 million by the end of 2023.
Who uses TikTok?
The vast majority of TikTok users are below 30 years old. Approximately 37 million Gen-Zers used TikTok in the US.
But TikTok also has a big difference between men and women on the platform:
| Gender | TikTok Users by Percentage |
|---|---|
| Male | 61% |
| Female | 39% |
61% of TikTok’s user base are female and just 39% are male.
Teenagers between the ages of 10 – 19 also account for 16.4% of TikTok’s users.
The bottom line is that most TikTokers are women under the age of 30.
American adults also love TikTok with 36% of US adults saying that they hold a favourable opinion about the app compared to other social media applications.
TikTok comes in 6th position in a list of the world’s most-used social media sites today.
That’s impressive for a network that was launched in 2016.
TikTok users have high similarities to Instagram. Almost 84% of TikTok’s audience also have an Instagram profile and use it regularly.
Instagram has been accused of copying TikTok with its “Reels” feature.
It is very similar to TikTok and was developed when Meta realised how popular the platform was becoming.
TikTok is also seen as a more “positive” social media platform. 57% of TikTok’s mentions around the internet are considered positive.
TikTok has paved the way for new brands to be created.
Most of the popular brands on TikTok are personal brands:
TikTok has slowly been developing its advertising platform.
Although it’s not quite as powerful as the big platforms like Facebook and YouTube, there is a lot of buzz around it.
63% of TikTok ads with the highest CTR put their message straight upfront. Vertical TikTok videos have a 25% higher watch-through rate.
Video ads need to be adapted to the platform to maximise results.
There is no doubt that social media is used by almost everyone.
But is social media actually good for us?
The truth is that social media is addictive.
Social media addiction statistics show that over 210 million people worldwide suffer from social media addiction.
There are currently 4.48 billion social media users globally, meaning about 4.69% of total users are addicted.
And it’s even worse for younger people:
A further 43% of young people feel very bad if no one likes or engages with their social media posts.
Social media has a lot of benefits, but it also has its downsides. Those downsides have very negative side effects on millions of people worldwide.
Want to learn more about how social media affects you?
Check out my complete social media addiction statistics post.
Social media is a big part of our lives now and in the future.
The above social media statistics show that it’s even increasing as new platforms are developed. Just look at the rapid rise of TikTok.
It’s also clear that there is no one social media platform that rules them all.
People today have and use multiple social media accounts to connect with family and friends while staying up to date with the latest news.
This isn’t likely to change in the future, either.
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