If they do, the age gradient would narrow. your prospects and customers. Since its inception in 1996, social media has managed to infiltrate half of the 7.7 billion people in the world. Who uses social media? Your email address will not be published. Think tank data company PEW Research Center noted a steady increase in internet and smartphone adoption, which significantly relates to the growth of social media in certain developing countries or regions. For example, TikTok was on one in five devices connected to the internet in 24 months. Which gender uses social media more by platform? Which gender uses social media more by region? So, how big is social media and how has it evolved today? According to the Global Web Index, the average number of social media accounts a person has is 8.6 worldwide, up 79.16% from 4.8 accounts in 2014. Social media users are also taking other proactive measures against data privacy, and 9% have taken the most drastic action of stopping using a social media platform altogether. Next-level SEO training and link building strategies, © 2021 Backlinko is a Trademark of Backlinko LLC. When looking at the number of people growing by region, Europe had the slowest activation of new active users at 4.9%. There was a similar story for the adoption of smartphone use also, doubling to almost 42% in the same period. In general, young people are more likely to use social media than older people. Help us do this work by making a donation. However, when we look into platform penetration rates from people in eligible audiences, 83.36% of 4.57 billion global internet users and 90.71% of 4.20 billion mobile internet users are on social media. Keep an Eye on the Competition. Every second, 11 people use social media for the first time. With 2.3 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform today. Professional social networks such as LinkedIn are important social media platforms for anyone looking to stand out in their profession. Again, social media data can help by helping you identify the most influential people on social media for your particular audience so you can get to know them. Below, we have the growth in time spent on social media in minutes; the data source is from all internet users from 47 countries, aged 16 to 64, and on any device. (Bubble sizes are proportional to the total number of users of each platform.). Young people tend to use social media more frequently. In practice, these discrepancies are likely small because most social media platforms, including Facebook, have policies and checks to avoid multiple accounts per person. ... TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they ... Young World Club. At the core, the features that define a social media platform are (i) profiles for users, (ii) ability for users to constantly upload content, and (iii) ability for users to discuss content and connect with other users. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, how we access information from the news, and how we organize to demand political change. The data comprised almost 200 million Instagram records in two separate sets, 42 million TikTok records, and four million YouTube records. The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. This chart shows that there are some large social media sites that have been around for ten or more years, such as Facebook, YouTube and Reddit; but other large sites are much newer. About the Author. YouTube follows this with 2 billion, then WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, and Instagram, all having 1 billion or more users. Here’s a summary of the Social Media Statistics for 2020: 3.5 billion social media users worldwide. Sources: Data Reportal, BankMyCell, Statcounter. Marketing and namely social media analytics provide numerous categories to analyze, so it is easy to get lost. Summary: Social Media Statistics. In 2020, the number of people using social media is over 3.81 billion worldwide, with the average user having 8.6 accounts on different networking sites. Other social media brands also collected a lot of data about their users. In 2017, less than 2.5 billion people were on social media worldwide. Social Media Usage Statistics (Top Picks), Most popular social media platforms in 2020, Average time spent on social media in 2020, The social media growth rate since 2015 is an average of. Below, we have the top 20 social media growth rankings by country, representing the largest number of users, not percentage increase: The total number of people using social media grew by 9.2% between April 2019 and Jan 2020. When did the rise of social media start and what are the largest sites today? Facebook, the largest social media platform in the world, has 2.4 billion users. Federal regulators are ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information … Fast changes like those brought about by social media always spark fears about possible negative effects. Use these social media stats to get better insights into the world of social media, and how you can maximize your results using these tools. Our World in Data: The rise of social media. Most of the social media platforms that survived the last decade have shifted significantly in what they offer users. The data for social media adoption in the US is here. There is evidence that in other rich countries people also spend many hours per day online. Regarding Facebook’s global numbers: In 2018 Facebook had 2.26 billion users, and in 2008 it had 100 million (you can check the data here ); the world population in 2008 was 6.8 billion, and in 2018 it was 7.63 billion (you can check the population data … In the interactive chart below we plot monthly active users, by platform, since 2004. A selection of surveys conducted by the PEW Research Center 2012-2019 shows the percentage of US adults who state they use the following apps on their phone or desktop. All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. As we can see, the average for the OECD is more than 4 hours per day, and in some countries the average is above 6 hours per day. Specifically in the context of social media, a key question is whether these new communication technologies are having a negative impact on our mental health – this is an important question and we cover the evidence at Our World in Data here. All of our charts can be embedded in any site. Big Data as Social Media Analytics. Since 2011 this is possible and today more than 50% of the content viewed on Twitter includes images and videos. If today’s young adults continue using social media throughout their life, then it’s likely that social media will continue growing rapidly as internet adoption expands throughout lower-income countries. The average number of people that use social media for work is 43% of all internet users aged 16 to 64 worldwide. The case of MySpace is remarkable considering that in 2006 it temporarily surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US. Because social media platforms collect so much data, it makes keeping tabs on your competition so much easier and less time-consuming. Social media penetration = active users vs. total population. Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone. The US social media penetration is calculated by the total number of active social network users versus the total population or those aged 13+. Federal Trade Commission asks how data is used to select advertisements for each user as Washington cracks down on Big Tech. Sites like Facebook and Instagram are more female orientated, especially Pinterest, which dominates with female audiences. In 2020, the average time spent on social media per day is 2 hours 24 minutes globally for users aged 16 to 64 on any device. Sources: GlobalWebIndex, PewResearch, Wikipedia, Social media platforms & Kepio’s Analysis. TikTok, for example, launched in September 2016 and by mid-2018 it had already reached half a billion users. From a back-of-the-envelope calculation we know that, if Facebook has 2.3 billion users, then at least 30% of the world uses social media.2 This is of course just an average – for some world regions, and specifically for some population groups, usage rates are much higher. What else would you like to see added to this roundup? However, when we look into platform penetration rates from people in eligible audiences, 83.36% of 4.57 billion global internet users and 90.71% of … In regards to social media usage by device, 98.68% of people in the world access networks exclusively on a mobile device (tablet or phone). Social network platforms almost tripled their total user base in the last decade, from 970 million in 2010 to the number passing 3.81 billion users in 2020. The World Health Organization estimates global life expectancy to be 73 years. The current global average gender split of social media users is 55% men versus 45% women. In this other chart we show the percentage of men and women who use different platforms in the US. The other side of the coin of big data on social media is arguably even more vital for businesses. Social media has had a profound effect on recruitment and hiring. For some platforms the gender differences are very large. License: All of Our World in Data is completely open access and all work is licensed under the Creative Commons BY license. Here we answer these and other key questions to understand social media use around the world. According to Keipo’s analysis, the country with the most significant social media growth in 2019-2020 was India, with 130 million new users joining platforms – equivalent to 9.6% of their total population. Regarding Facebook’s global numbers: In 2018 Facebook had 2.26 billion users, and in 2008 it had 100 million (you can check the data here); the world population in 2008 was 6.8 billion, and in 2018 it was 7.63 billion (you can check the population data here.). This is shown in the chart where we plot the breakdown of social media use by age groups in the US. Following that, services like AOL Instant Messenger, Live Journal, and Friendster launched all paving the way for the leader, Facebook, in 2004. According to the survey from Pew Research, 36% of adults 18 to 29 in the US say they ‘often get news via social media’, which is higher than the share saying they ‘often get news via other platforms’, such as news sites, TV, radio or print newspapers. However, this data is … Marketing decisions should be backed by data about consumers, their behavior, and conversions. Stacker compiled a list of 15 ways personal data is revealed to social media companies. The majority of people under 25 use Snapchat (73%), while only 3% of people over 65 use it. The rise of social media began back in 1996 with the release of networking site Bolt (now closed). A standout figure relevant to marketers from this chart is the 99 percent of total social media users accessing via mobile at some point. The total of 144 minutes is a 1.4% increase from 142 minutes the previous year, and up 38% in the past 5 years. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. The aggregate numbers mask a great deal of heterogeneity across platforms – some social media sites are much more popular than others among specific population groups. By region, social media growth in 2019-2020 is led by Asia: Facebook is the leading social network at, In the US, 2019-2020’s monthly active users are, The average number of social media accounts is, The growth in the number of accounts per person is up, Firstly, the growth of multi-networking relates to the widening of, America’s social media growth rate between 2019 and 2020 was, The total number of users America has grown by, People in the Philippines spend the most daily time networking at, People in Japan spend the least daily time on networking at. For Reddit it is the other way around, the share of men is almost twice as high. You can drag the slider in this chart to see the ranking for other years. This chart summarises the importance and growth of social media. In this post, we focus on the social media data which starts at around slide 75 in the report. Popular platforms like Facebook have over 66.39% of their monthly users logging in to use social media daily. In 2014 there was a median of 42% of people that accessed the internet occasionally, now this figure must be well over 65%, which was the last number recorded from the PEW study in 2017. Below we have the frequency of visits Americans have to these popular social media sites, all platforms other than Twitter get at least half of their users visiting the platform every single day. The following chart provides some perspective. From the same survey we also know that 48% of adults 18 to 29 say they go online almost constantly, and 46% say they go online multiple times per day. 4. Only 43.27% of people now access the internet on desktop (leaving 2.92% on tablets). Either way, please jump in and leave a comment below. We begin with an outline of key trends and conclude with a perspective on the rate of adoption of social media relative to other modern communication technologies. Social Network Usage & Growth Statistics: How Many People Use Social Media in 2020? Creating profiles on multiple social media platforms in hopes … The rise of social media is an extraordinary example of how quickly and drastically social behaviours can change: Something that is today part of the everyday life of one-third of the world population, was unthinkable less than a generation ago. Social media may have roots in the 1840s introduction of the telegraph, which connected the United States.. Below, we have the average daily time spent on social media in hours and minutes from 47 countries; the data source is from all internet users aged 16 to 64 on any device. To put this in perspective: TikTok gained on average about 20 million new users per month over this period. Today, in 2020, some 3.8 million people use social media, which is more than half the world's population. It now relies on the continuous growth in the number of people with internet access and smartphones, particularly in developing regions. In 2018, this regulation will likely become a bigger and more pressing reality. Please consult our full legal disclaimer. The data also shows rapid changes in the opposite direction. Data gathered from the demand will be used for a study that will "lift the hood on the social media and video streaming firms to carefully study their engines," the commission said in a statement. The company also reports that social media users now spend an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes per day using social media. But some platforms are much more popular among younger people. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators are ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok's parent and five other social media companies to provide … Twitter, for example, didn’t allow users to upload videos or images in the beginning. FTC seeks information from social media companies on data collection. As we can see, the average for the OECD is close to 90%. In the article, Aleh Barysevich defines major points for a social media … The company also reports that social media users now spend an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes per day using social media. As social media becomes more and more widespread, and the technologies behind data analytics advances further, companies will be struggling to navigate the tricky and confusing world of data analytics, while still following the laws about data use and protection. Our new Digital 2020 July Global Statshot report – published in partnership with Hootsuite and We Are Social – reveals that more than half of the world’s total population now uses social media. Unfortunately, social networks looking to expand in these territories will make a lot less from the advertising profits per user, so user volume is critical for their earnings. The data for social media adoption in the US is here. For Snapchat and Instagram the ‘age gradient’ is extremely steep – the popularity of these platforms drops much faster with age. Social media’s growth in the US is comparable – in speed and to some extent also in reach – to that of most modern communication-enabling technologies, including computers, smartphones and the internet. According to StatCounter, the current mobile vs. desktop market share worldwide is weighted more towards mobile, with 53.81% of people accessing the internet on a feature or smartphone. They allow people to … The heavy hitter in the social media world, of course, is Facebook with 1.86 billion active monthly users [2]. When looking at the top 8 social platforms by monthly active users, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok index higher in male users. However, this data is based on surveys conducted between January and March this year, so there’s a good chance that the recent spate of COVID-19-related lockdowns will have resulted in people spending even more time using social media each day. The spectacular year-on-year adoption of new users on the platforms is, however, slowing down. The bar chart below shows a ranking of the top social media platforms, year by year. Probably the first recognizable social media site, in the format we know today, was Six Degrees – a platform created in 1997 that enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. The increase in social media use over the last decade has, of course, come together with a large increase in the amount of time that people spend online. johannes Eichstaedt is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania under Martin Seligman. It’s possible that there are some discrepancies between the number of ‘active users’ and the number of people, since one person could in theory maintain multiple accounts. In fact, in rich countries, where access to the internet is nearly universal, the vast majority of young adults use it. By comparison, this shows just how ‘mobile’ social media is. > Big Data and the World of Social Media. By 2021, Newcomer TikTok will have joined the 1 billion user club. Our chart here shows the proportion of people aged 16 to 24 who use social networks across a selection of countries. 70% of the US population has active social media accounts, with a year-on-year growth rate of 3.1% from 2019-2020. Social media has changed the world. If the average person persisted with the same social media usage, they would spend 5.7 years / 2,080 days on platforms in their eligible lifespan. Early computing. This is arguably the beginning of social media as we know it.1. WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators are ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and teens. All social networks report growth data on the number of monthly active users or MAU’s rather than the number of accounts, as this data is more accurate for measuring actual use and territory penetration. The share of women who use Pinterest is more than twice as high as the share of men using this platform. Regarding Facebook’s global numbers: In 2018 Facebook had 2.26 billion users, and in 2008 it had 100 million (you can check the data here ); the world population in 2008 was 6.8 billion, and in 2018 it was 7.63 billion (you can … Other social media platforms including Youtube and Whatsapp also have more than one billion users each. The percentage of US adults who use social media increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. As you can see, daily use of Facebook has remained the same, despite reports that more and more people are taking steps to reduce their Facebook use, as well as some of the controversy surrounding the site in regards to data privacy. datasets available on data.world. More than half of all the people on Earth now use social media. Facebook is also the social media channel arguably under the most scrutiny for its various data breaches and security concerns, especially over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As you can see from the data above, social network usage is different for men and women globally when examining location. The diagonal line marks parity;  so sites above the diagonal line are those more popular among men and sites below are those more popular among women. In second place was China (15 m), Indonesia (12 m), Brazil (11 m), Iran (9.4 m), and the USA in 6th place with 6.9 million new users. Social media data (or social data for short) refers to all of the raw insights and information collected from individuals social media activity – e.g. Social media data tracks how individuals engage with your content or channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. expands throughout lower-income countries. In 2020, Facebook is the leading social network with people with 2.60 billion of the 3.81 billion social media users worldwide. Almost every company is trying to get a slice of the social media pie. The most recent data from Pew, which took a look at usage from 2019, found the following breakdown for US social media use by platform. The first social media site to reach a million monthly active users was MySpace – it achieved this milestone around 2004. 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