SOCIAL MEDIA NOW REACHES OVER 60% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION

Tue 25 July 2023:

Nearly five billion individuals, or more than 60% of the world’s population, use social media, according to the new study.

This statistic indicates a rise of 3.7% from the prior year, according to digital advisory firm Kepios.

The number of social network users, at 5.19 billion, or 64.5% of the global population, is getting close to that of Internet users.

The report also noted that regional differences in social media usage are significant. Only one out of every eleven people in East and Central Africa and one out of every three people in India use social media.

The amount of time spent on social media has also increased, rising by two minutes per day to two hours and 26 minutes.

Brazilians spend an average of three hours and 49 minutes per day on social media while the Japanese spend less than an hour.

Data from GWI reveals that the typical social media user actively uses or visits an average of 6.7 different social platforms each month, and spends an average of 2 hours 26 minutes per day using social media.

Assuming that people sleep for between 7 and 8 hours per day, these latest figures suggest that people spend roughly 15 percent of their waking lives using social media.

Added together, the world spends close to 12 billion hours using social platforms each day, which is the equivalent of more than 1.35 million years of human existence.

The average social media user is on seven platforms.

With WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, Meta has three favourite apps. WeChat, TikTok, and its local version Douyin are the three most popular apps in China. The top social media platforms are completed by Twitter, Messenger, and Telegram, according to the report.

Despite TikTok’s enormous popularity, the US Precise Advertiser Report: Kids (PARK) revealed that roughly 9 out of 10 children under the age of 12 in the US access content on YouTube as opposed to 4 out of 10 on TikTok.

When asked what kind of media they had been watching recently, 86% responded YouTube, followed by 63% who said video on demand, 50% who said gaming, and 38% who said TikTok. YouTube Shorts are known to half of children who watch the platform, and a fifth of them have seen YouTube Shorts advertisements while doing so.

The world’s biggest social media platforms

Facebook remains the world’s most widely used social media platform, but there are now seven social media platforms that each claim one billion or more monthly active users.

Four of these seven platforms are owned by Meta.

Furthermore, 15 social media platforms have at least 400 million active users in July 2023:

Facebook has 2.989 billion monthly active users (see more Facebook stats here)
YouTube’s potential advertising reach is 2.527 billion^(a)
WhatsApp has at least 2 billion monthly active users
Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users (see more Instagram stats here)
WeChat (inc. Weixin 微信) has 1.319 billion monthly active users
TikTok ads can potentially reach 1.081 billion adults over the age of 18 each month^(a) (see more TikTok stats here)
Facebook Messenger’s potential advertising reach is 1.038 bllion^(a) (see more Facebook Messenger stats here)
Snapchat has 750 million monthly active users (see more Snapchat stats here)
Douyin (抖音) has 730 million^(c) monthly active users
Telegram has 700 million monthly active users
Kuaishou (快手) has 654 million monthly active users
QQ (腾讯QQ) has 597 million monthly active users.
Sina Weibo (新浪微博) has 593 million monthly active users
Twitter’s reported potential advertising reach was 564 million^(a) in July 2023, but the platform’s published ad reach data is currently subect to significant fluctuations, even from day to day (see more Twitter stats here)
Pinterest has 463 million monthly active users (see more Pinterest stats here)