5 billion social media users
Social media use in 2024
There are 5.04 billion social media users at the start of 2024, equating to 62.3 percent of the world’s total population. Social media users have grown by 5.6 percent over the past year, with 266 million new users in 2023 equating to an average increase of 8.4 new users every single second.The top headline in DataReportal’s huge Digital 2024 Global Overview Report is that active social media user identities have passed the 5 billion mark.
Kepios’s analysis of the latest data from around the world shows that the cumulative total of active users on the top platform in each country reached 5.04 billion by the start of 2024.
And while this “user identities” figure may not equate to unique, human individuals, it still marks a momentous milestone on social media’s journey.
Social media use continues to grow
Social media user identities have increased by 266 million over the past twelve months, delivering year-on-year growth of 5.6 percent.
On average, that equates to almost 730,000 new user identities every day during 2023, at a rate of 8.4 new users every single second.
And despite the fact that social media growth has slowed considerably since the surges that we saw during the early days of Covid-19 lockdowns, user growth actually maintained the more elevated momentum we saw for most of 2023 during the last three months of the year.
Our analysis shows that social media user identities increased by 1.5 percent between October and December, thanks to an additional 75 million new users.
And these figures suggest that growth in the final quarter of 2023 was actually higher than the average for the year as a whole, with increases averaging 9.4 new users every second over those final three months of the year.
The most popular online activity
Meanwhile, research from GWI reveals that social media is the most popular online activity in the world.
At a global level, 94.7 percent of internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 say that they use online chat and messaging services each month.
GWI’s findings focus on working-age adults in 53 of the world’s largest economies, but their findings echo those of a recent study covering other locations.
GSMA Intelligence reports that roughly 9 in 10 mobile internet users across lower- and middle-income countries now use instant messaging, making it even more popular than making or receiving calls.
Meanwhile, GWI reports that social networking attracts only slightly fewer users than instant messaging.
The company’s latest research indicates that 94.3 percent of internet users aged 16 to 64 use social networking platforms each month – just 0.4 percentage points behind chat apps.
And – perhaps surprisingly – younger users are more likely to use social networking services than they are to use chat and messaging platforms.
For context, search engines rank third across all age groups, but with “only” 80.7 percent of working-age internet users visiting these platforms each month, social media is clearly the top online activity.
And for added perspective, a massive 97.4 percent of GWI’s survey respondents say that they use either a chat app or a social network each month, meaning that almost all of the world’s internet users engage in some form of social media activity on a monthly basis.
But social media’s popularity isn’t just measured in user numbers.
Social media also accounts for a significant share of the world’s online time, as we explore in this separate, detailed article.
The history of social media
But how did we get here?
Well, despite today’s impressive stats, it actually took a few decades for social media use to gain momentum.
Let’s take a closer look back over the world’s journey to 5 billion social media users.
Instant messaging
Platforms like WhatsApp and WeChat may seem like relatively recent additions to the communications landscape, but you may be surprised to learn that instant messaging has a long and storied past.
In fact, computer-mediated instant messaging has existed since before the internet, with users of multi-user operating systems like CTSS and Multics already able to send real-time messages between machines as early as the 1960s.
However, the first multi-user online chat service – Talkomatic – launched more than 50 years ago, in 1973.
At the time of its launch, Talkomatic offered a total of six distinct “channels” – with each channel akin to a ‘chat room’ – and each of these channels could host a maximum of five chat participants at any one time.
Interestingly, Talkomatic users could see what other users were typing in real-time, and participants didn’t need to wait for a person to hit “send” before they could read what the person was sharing.
Talkomatic ran on the PLATO system, which offered educational services through a series of networked mainframe systems.
As a result, Talkomatic access was largely restricted to people in educational environments.
The first commercially available online chat service was CompuServe’s CB Simulator, which launched in February 1980 [random aside: the Rolling Stones’s Mick Jagger held the first online “multimedia” conference using CompuServe CB in December 1995].
“Talkers” also came to prominence in the mid-1980s, and in many ways, these services laid the groundwork for much of what we see in today’s instant messengers.
Around the same time, Quantum Link – colloquially known as Q-Link – brought instant chat and messaging services to Commodore computers, via dial-up modem connections.
Instant messaging then started to gain more significant momentum with the launch of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988, and there were already around 40 IRC servers worldwide by the middle of 1989.
Messaging in the 90s
But it was the advent of standalone messenger platforms in the 1990s that “supercharged” the growth of instant messaging.
Launched in 1994, PowWow was one of the first applications to bring instant messaging to the burgeoning Microsoft Windows operating system, alongside voice chat (VoIP) and shared whiteboards.
But perhaps the most famous of these early messenger platforms was ICQ, which launched in 1996.
By the time it was acquired by AOL in 1998, ICQ had already attracted close to 12 million users.
Just three years later, ICQ’s user base had grown by a factor of eight, and the service passed the 100 million registered user mark in May 2001.
For perspective, at that time, the world was home to just under 500 million internet users.
These figures suggest that more than 1 in 5 internet users had created an ICQ account by 2001, and roughly 2 in 3 ICQ users lived outside of the United States.
However, not all of ICQ’s 100 million registered members were active.
Reports at the time suggested that between 25 and 30 percent of ICQ’s registered users accessed the platform each month, although an average of 8 million users accessed the service every day, which was a particularly impressive achievement for the time.
But by the turn of the millennium, other messenger platforms were also gaining momentum.
The rise of messengers during the 2000s
America Online had launched its AOL Instant Messenger platform – better known as AIM – in May 1997, and by June 2000, the service had already attracted more than 61 million registered users, 20 million of whom were “active”.
Around that time, audience analysts Media Metrix reported that AIM’s active user base was growing at just under 20 percent per year.
Dig deeper: if you’d like to learn more about AIM and its impact, try this and this.
Not to be outdone, Yahoo! – one of the other great tech behemoths of the time – had also launched a messenger service in the late 1990s.
Yahoo! Messenger “officially” launched in June 1999, but the platform was ostensibly an amalgamation of the Yahoo! Pager service that had launched in March 1998, and the company’s earlier Yahoo! Chat rooms.
Estimates suggest that Yahoo! Messenger had gained more than 10 million active users by August 2000, but it’s unclear whether this figure refers to its total global user base, or if it only includes users in the United States.
Yahoo!’s 2001 annual report also reveals that the service averaged more than 6 billion messages per month in the final three months of that year.
Dig deeper: read more on Yahoo! Messenger here.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s rival MSN Messenger was also gaining momentum at the start of the century.
The service had launched in July 1999, and by March 2001, MSN Messenger had almost 30 million monthly active users.
At the time, Microsoft revealed that the use of MSN Messenger had grown by “more than 200 percent” over the preceding 12 months, making the platform the “single most-used instant messaging service in the world”.
Dig deeper: explore some great MSN Messenger nostalgia here.
However, by the late 90s, the Chinese government had already activated its “Great Firewall”.
With the country’s internet users increasingly unable to access platforms that had gained popularity elsewhere, Chinese companies started building their own social platforms, and in February 1999, Tencent launched its now legendary QQ platform.
QQ started out as an ICQ clone, but the messenger quickly grew to become the most widely used social platform in China, and offered many unique features and innovations of its own.
Tencent’s investor earnings announcements show that the platform had already attracted 50 million active users by the end of 2002, and this active base had grown to more than 100 million users by 2004.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, Skype launched in 2003, and while the platform is probably best known for its VoIP platform, its instant messaging functionality was also a big draw, especially amongst business users.
The mobile messaging era
AIM, MSN Messenger, Skype, and QQ dominated instant messaging until the late 2000s.
However, the 2007 launch of the iPhone changed the game, and a new crop of mobile messaging apps quickly gained momentum.
Data suggests that WhatsApp users surpassed those of MSN Messenger and Skype sometime in 2013, but Tencent’s Weixin – also known as WeChat outside of China – didn’t overtake QQ until late 2016.
Somewhat frustratingly, Meta doesn’t publish regular user figures for WhatsApp, and the latest “official” update was in 2020, when the platform announced 2 billion monthly active users.
That figure is still the one touted on the platform’s Business site today, but Kepios analysis suggests that WhatsApp likely has around 2.3 billion monthly active users at the start of 2024.
Meanwhile, Tencent reports that the combined active user bases of Weixin and WeChat had grown to 1.34 billion by September 2023.
At a worldwide level, WhatsApp and Weixin dominate the instant messaging market, but two other services are also worthy of note.
LINE is currently the messenger of choice in Japan, and the company’s business resources (in Japanese) indicate that the platform now has 96 million monthly active users in the country.
Meanwhile, KakaoTalk is the most popular messaging service in South Korea, and the company reported more than 48 million monthly active users in the country for Q3 2023.
Our analysis of these figures suggests that the combined audience of the most popular messaging platform in each country is roughly 3.7 billion users, while the total number of instant messaging users around the world now exceeds 5 billion.
Social networks
But instant messengers are just one side of the social media story, so let’s shift our focus to social networks.
Interestingly, the first web-based social media platforms had already emerged before ICQ.
The early days
Launched in 1994, some might argue that GeoCities was the first of these “social media” platforms, especially after the site started offering chat, bulletin boards, and other community elements in mid-1995.
Similarly, theGlobe is another example of early social media.
The platform’s website launched in 1995, and reportedly attracted 44,000 visits in its first month.
That may not sound like a lot by today’s standards, but there were fewer than 50 million internet users at that time, and the site launched six months before the first web banner ad.
As a result, theGlobe relied on TV advertising to promote its service, and even distributed CD-ROMs to help build momentum.
By the time of its record-breaking IPO in 1998, theGlobe.com claimed 1.3 million registered users.
However, the site effectively shut down less than three years later, in August 2001, following the dot-com crash.
But despite those earlier successes, SixDegrees is commonly regarded as the first example of a social network as we know these services today, launching to the public in 1997.
Even at its peak though, SixDegrees only gained 3.5 million registered members, and its first incarnation shuttered on 30 December 2000.
Meanwhile, other notable social network companies that launched in the late 1990s include Open Diary and Mixi.
Mixi went on to become one of the dominant forces in social media in Japan in the late 2000s, but – while the company still exists – it ceded dominance to LINE and Twitter (now X) over the following decade.
Impressively, Open Diary still operates today, and users are still actively posting to the site – albeit in relatively modest numbers – making it one of the oldest social platforms in existence.
Social comes of age in the mid-2000s
However, it was the launch of Friendster and Myspace in 2003 that really kickstarted the social media revolution.
Reports suggest that Friendster gained 3 million users within its first few months of operation, and it took just 3 years and 8 days for Myspace to reach 100 million registered accounts.
However, both platforms eventually succumbed to Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg and friends launched “TheFacebook.com” on 04 February 2004, and the site had passed the 100 million user mark by August 2008.
At the start of 2010, Facebook had 400 million monthly active users, and that number reached the momentous 1 billion user mark in September 2012.
Fast forward to today, and Facebook’s global active user total had swelled to more than 3 billion by the end of 2023, making it the world’s largest social media platform by officially reported user numbers.
Separately, Kepios analysis suggests that YouTube may have a higher number of monthly active users than Facebook, but Google does not publish official MAU figures for YouTube, and the platform’s reported advertising reach currently sits at around 2.5 billion.
But most “Western” social platforms have long been blocked by China’s Great Firewall, and as a result, the country’s social media landscape has followed a different path.
One of the first Chinese social networks to gain significant momentum was Qzone, which grew out of the QQ messenger platform in 2005.
Tencent’s investor earnings reports show that QZone had already surpassed 100 million monthly active users by early 2008, and Tencent gleefully reported in a related press release that “Qzone active users largely exceed Facebook’s”:
“The latest report from Facebook – the American site acclaimed as the trend leader of online networking and Web 2.0 – put its active users at 67 million. Qzone’s active users in a single month exceed Facebook’s by nearly 50%.”
At its height, Qzone attracted close to 670 million monthly active users.
Renren was another Chinese social media platform that gained noteworthy momentum.
The company initially reported high numbers of “activated” users, but it appears that this was merely a clever play on words to report registered members, and monthly active user figures likely peaked at around 50 million.
But, much like QQ, Qzone and Renren were usurped in the mid-2010s by Tencent’s other superstar platform, Weixin.
Known as WeChat outside of China, Weixin launched to the public in January 2011, and already claimed more than 300 million registered accounts by the end of the following year.
By the end of 2013, the service already attracted more than 350 million monthly active users, and just one year later, the combined audiences of Weixin and WeChat had reached the half-billion monthly active users mark.
By the third quarter of 2015, Weixin had roughly the same number of active users as Qzone, and by late 2016, it had overtaken QQ to become China’s largest social platform.
WeChat and Weixin reached 1 billion combined users in March 2018, and Tencent’s latest investor earnings report shows that the platforms now host a combined total of 1.34 billion active users each month.
Social media users in 2024
But despite their impressive ascent, Facebook, WhatsApp, and WeChat are just three of the many hundreds of social media platforms out there.
Indeed, our analysis suggests that there are now 14 social media platforms with at least half a billion monthly active users, and many more with more than 100 million MAUs.
For example, in the instant messaging world, Telegram now claims more than 800 million monthly active users, while Facebook Messenger hovers around a billion users.
And in social networks, Instagram now has more than 2 billion users, while in China, Weibo – previously known as “Sina Weibo” – now has more than 600 million monthly active users, making it one of China’s most enduring platforms.
Global social media users
But what about overall social media use?
Well, it’s actually much harder to quantify that overall user figure, because many people use multiple social media platforms each month.
Indeed, the latest research from GWI shows that the typical social media user now makes active use of 6.7 distinct platforms in any given month.
More broadly, GWI’s survey reveals that more than 97 percent of internet users aged 16 to 64 in 53 of the world’s largest economies use at least one social platform each month.
And for added perspective, our latest data suggests that the countries in GWI’s survey account for roughly 87 percent of the world’s total internet user base.
However, platform age restrictions likely mean that social media use is considerably lower amongst internet users below the age of 13.
Similarly, data suggests that internet users above the age of 65 tend to use social media less than those in GWI’s working-age sample.
Meanwhile, internet users in less developed economies may use social media less than their peers in the 53 markets covered by GWI’s survey, although data from GSMA Intelligence indicates that social media is still the top online activity in lower- and middle-income countries.
But given this variance, we can’t simply apply GWI’s 97.4 percent figure to the world’s 5.35 billion internet users in order to quantify global social media use.
Social media ad reach
Fortunately, however, many of the large social media platforms publish advertising reach figures by country, and these datasets allow us to build a better understanding of social media use at a local level.
This advertising audience data isn’t perfect of course, and it’s worth highlighting that each platform’s ad reach figures likely include a meaningful number of duplicate and “false” accounts.
For perspective, Meta itself estimates that such accounts represent 11 percent and 4 to 5 percent of Facebook’s active user base, respectively.
However, Meta’s own data suggests that Facebook ads only reach about 72 percent of the platform’s total monthly active user base, so – even after we factor those duplicate and false accounts – the platform’s ad reach data may still under-represent its total active user base.
And furthermore, our analysis of more great data from GWI indicates that – while Facebook is still the most used social platform in most markets – less than 75 percent of social media users outside of China use the platform each month.
Based on all of this, even if we were to use Facebook as the basis for estimates of social media use in each country outside of China, the company’s ad reach figures would likely underestimate total social media use.
It’s worth noting that we use ad reach signals from a variety of different platforms to inform our overall social media user numbers, but each of these datasets will be subject to factors similar to those detailed above.
And while our global social media user figure relies on a slightly different dataset to the ones we use for individual country figures, we take a similarly cautious view there too, in order to avoid double-counting.
All of which leads us to our latest global total of 5.04 billion active social media user identities.
Social media users by country
As you might guess though, social media use varies considerably by country.
Before we explore the local numbers, it’s worth highlighting that our figures for social media adoption in some countries exceed figures for total population.
In most cases, these countries are home to large expat and migrant communities that are not included in “official” census counts.
This can lead to what appear to be “inflated” social media adoption figures, but these social media user figures may actually be more representative indicators of resident populations than official census data, so we report the data and comparisons “as is”, in order to allow readers to make their own interpretations.
Similarly, because internet user figures are almost always reported as a percentage of population, the same phenomenon also affects comparisons with internet users.
For reference, social media platforms tend to report audience reach figures in terms of absolute user numbers (e.g. “3,500,000”), and not as a relative percentage of population.
As a result, it’s not uncommon for our social media user figure to exceed the internet user figure for the same country.
You can find details of absolute social media user numbers in each of our local country reports, but – despite the apparent anomalies – using relative adoption figures actually provides for more representative comparison.
Ranking countries by social adoption
When compared to total population, the United Arab Emirates comes top of the social media adoption rankings, with our latest social media user identities figure equating to 112.3 percent of the local population figure published by the United Nations.
However, it’s worth highlighting here that roughly 9 in 10 people living in the UAE may be an expat, which helps to explain why social media adoption rates exceed 100 percent of the reported population.
Interestingly, all of the top five countries by social media adoption rates are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia topping this year’s rankings after the UAE.
It’s also worth noting that social media adoption rates exceed 90 percent of the total population across all five countries, with South Korea the only other nation in this year’s ranking’s where we see such elevated levels of adoption.
Once again though, reports indicate that expat communities are an important consideration across all GCC nations, including Saudi Arabia.
Lowest rates of social media use
At the other end of the spectrum, North Korea has the lowest level of social media adoption in the world, owing to its government’s complete internet blockade.
Eritrea ranks second-to-last, with the latest user data pointing to a social media adoption rate of just 0.4 percent.
However, with social media all but blocked in the reclusive African state since 2019, it’s remarkable that anyone in the country is able to access social platforms at all.
And we see a similar situation in Turkmenistan, where the country’s government has blocked access to “foreign” social media for a number of years.
However, more than 100,000 people in the country are still able to access some of the world’s larger social platforms (at least on occasion), resulting in Turkmenistan’s social media adoption rate of 1.7 percent.
In total, social media adoption remains below 10 percent in 19 countries, 15 of which are in Africa.
Share of connected population
Meanwhile, comparing social media user data with internet user numbers appears to tell quite a different story.
However, figures at the top of this ranking appear to have been skewed by the fact that many of these top countries haven’t published “official” updates to internet adoption figures for more than five years.
Once again though, we’ve published these comparisons “as is”, because they provide a valuable reference for readers hoping to develop a better understanding of the use of connected technologies in these countries.
Social media use by age
In previous years, social media ad audience data enabled us to provide meaningful insights into social media adoption across all ages.
However, recent changes to EU regulation mean that Meta no longer shows ads to users below the age of 18 across the bloc, and ad audience figures for this age group across Europe have now effectively fallen to zero.
As the company explains in its advertising Help resources:
“We will temporarily stop showing ads to teens in the EU, the EEA and Switzerland as we continue to evaluate the impact of EU regulation. During this temporary pause in ads delivery, businesses can continue to connect with teens organically on Facebook and Instagram. We’ll share more details in the coming months about how the EU teen ad experience may change.”
As a result of these changes, we’re no longer able to report what we believe are accurate figures for overall social media use by age.
However, you’ll still find data for the use of individual social platforms by age and gender in our complete Digital 2024 Global Overview Report.
Dig deeper
You can also explore local country figures for each of these platforms via our dedicated social media platform reports:
And if you’re keen to learn more about the trends shaping social media adoption and use in 2024, check out our other Digital 2024 Deep Dive articles.
Disclosure: Simon Kemp is a brand ambassador for both GWI and data.ai.
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