2025 looks set to be another bumper year in digital, with rapid advances in AI, the evolving social media landscape, and broadening online behaviours all gearing up to reshape our connected lives over the coming months.

With so much going on, the pace of digital trends can feel overwhelming, but our enormous new Digital 2025 Global Overview Report – published in partnership between We Are Social and Meltwater – has all the stats, insights, and trends you need to make complete sense of the current “state of digital”.

Top stories in the 630+ pages of this year’s flagship Global Digital Report include:

Digital’s ever expanding role in our daily lives
The accelerating momentum of AI
How people discover brands and products in 2025
The staggering scale of mobile video
Unexpected trends in TikTok’s numbers
The evolution of online shopping
Some surprising truths about the world’s TV habits
Details of some dramatic shifts in ad spend
All the latest trends for the top social platforms
Why silver may turn to gold in 2025

But those headlines barely scratch the surface of all the insights that you’ll find in the complete report.

Indeed, we’ve analysed millions of the freshest, most revealing datapoints to identify key trends in the world’s digital behaviours, and this latest update – the largest Global Digital Report we’ve ever published – is packed with loads more data, trends, and surprises, as you’ll see below.

The ultimate collection of digital data

As always, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our generous data partners, who provide much of the best-in-class data you’ll find in this report:

Authenticity statement

All of the analysis that you’re about to read has been written by Simon Kemp, without the use of generative AI [click here to learn why this matters].

Simon has been researching and producing the Global Digital Reports series for 15 years, so he’s intimately familiar with the “state of digital”, and how the world’s connected behaviours are evolving.

If you’d like to stay up to date with Simon’s regular analyses, he’d be delighted if you connect with him on LinkedIn.

⚠️ Important notes

As you explore this latest report – and especially as you compare trends over time – please be aware of the following data notes:

Wherever possible, we use the latest available data for all datapoints in our global digital reports. However, in some instances, data for recent periods may not yet be available, and source data may not have been updated during the past 12 months. This is particularly relevant in the case of internet user data, where the challenges associated with conducting representative research into internet adoption mean that it often takes many months for new data to become available. As a result, we may report no change in certain metrics, even if we expect such metrics will show meaningful change when data for the relevant period(s) become available at a later date. Because of this, we strongly encourage you to explore the timeline charts available in our local country reports, which will provide more informed insight into the evolution of digital adoption and behaviour. Note that our Digital 2025 local country reports will be available to read in full – and for free – on the DataReportal website at the end of February 2025, but you can already explore data for previous years via our complete online library.
The United Nations published a comprehensive update to its World Population Prospects data in July 2024, and this update included some important revisions to population numbers around the world. In addition to impacting the figures that we report for population, these revisions may also affect any data point where we show digital adoption or activity as a percentage of the total population (e.g. internet and social media adoption), or as a percentage of specific age groups within the broader population (e.g. people aged 18 and above). As a consequence, any comparisons with equivalent data points published in older editions of the Global Digital Reports series may result in unexpected trends, including apparent decreases in user figures or activity. However, any such change may be solely the result of revisions to underlying population data, and may not necessarily indicate any change in actual digital adoption or behaviour. As a result, we advise significant caution when interpreting any changes in values that show digital adoption or activity as a percentage of the population. For more details, please see our comprehensive notes on data.
We’ve identified a number of unusual trends in the ad reach data published by various social media platforms over recent months, including a mix of both unexpected declines and unusually large gains. We’ll explore some of those trends in detail during the course of this analysis, but please pay careful attention to the notes on relevant pages of the full report to understand some of these changes in context.

The complete Digital 2025 Global Overview Report

You’ll find our complete Digital 2025 flagship report in the embed below (click here if that’s not working for you), but read on past that to explore my in-depth analysis of what all these numbers actually mean for you and your work.

The global state of digital in February 2025

Let’s start with a look at the latest headlines for digital adoption and use around the world:

Population data from the United Nations shows that there are 8.20 billion humans living on Earth today, with that total increasing by 70 million people (+0.9 percent) compared with the equivalent figure for this time last year. At a worldwide level, almost 4.8 billion people – 58.1 percent of the global population – now live in urban centres, while 3.4 billion people live in rural areas.
5.78 billion people use a mobile phone today, which equates to 70.5 percent of the world’s total population. Unique mobile subscribers have increased by 112 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-on-year growth of 2.0 percent. Meanwhile, data shows that smartphones now account for almost 87 percent of the mobile handsets in use around the world.
A total of 5.56 billion people use the internet at the start of 2025, resulting in a penetration figure of 67.9 percent. Internet users increased by 136 million (+2.5 percent) during 2024, but 2.63 billion people remained offline at the start of 2025.
Kepios’s latest analysis shows that global social media user identities now stand at 5.24 billion, with that figure equating to 63.9 percent of all the people on Earth. The global total has increased by 4.1 percent over the past 12 months, thanks to an additional 206 million new user identities [note that “user identities” may not represent unique individuals].

That’s some great context to start things off, but – while these headlines provide a useful benchmark for the current “state of digital” – we need to explore the underlying numbers in order to uncover the richest findings.

So, get yourself comfortable with your beverage of choice, and join me as we go deep – real deep – into this year’s data.

The world is ever more connected

Unlike the wave of big headlines that we saw during 2024, there are no standout “milestone figures” in our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.

However, don’t let the absence of “big round numbers” fool you.

Indeed, all the evidence points to continued strong growth in digital adoption and use over recent months, and the numbers that we do have tell equally compelling stories.

For initial context – as we reported in our April 2024 update – internet users now qualify for “supermajority” status, meaning that there are more than twice as many people using the internet today as there are people who remain offline.

And perhaps more tellingly, the internet now reaches even more people than conventional TV.

For perspective, data from Statista indicates that 5.32 billion people watch “linear” TV formats like broadcast and cable channels today, but that figure is almost a quarter of a billion lower than our latest internet user total of 5.56 billion.

It’s worth noting that mobile still reaches more people than the internet though, and the latest data suggest that roughly 220 million of the world’s 5.78 billion mobile users do not currently use the internet.

Crucially though, the latest data shows that people all over the world are turning to connected devices and services for a wider variety of activities and needs today than they did this time a year ago, and these evolving behaviours are perhaps more representative of digital trends than user numbers alone.

Greater digital expectations

This time two years ago – in our Digital 2023 Global Overview Report – we were exploring a rather unexpected trend: the average number of motivations for using the internet had fallen to the lowest figure we’d seen in GWI’s regular survey.

Fast-forward to the start of 2025 though, and that downward trend has very much reversed.

In fact, GWI’s latest research shows that the average number of reasons for using the internet has rebounded to levels that we last saw during the era of Covid-19 lockdowns.

“Finding information” remains the single greatest motivation for going online at the start of 2025, with 62.8 percent of adult internet users stating that this is one of their main reasons for using the internet today.

However, it’s also interesting to note that more than 6 in 10 internet users now say that “staying in touch with friends and family” is a top digital motivation.

And perhaps more tellingly, social interactions are now the primary reason for going online amongst internet users aged 16 to 34, whereas this motivation only ranks third amongst internet users aged 55 and above.

These differences may be as much determined by lifestage as they are by variations in digital outlook, but either way, the fact that younger people cite social connection as their top digital need has important implications for the future of digital devices and services.

Social connection doesn’t just mean social media though, and – as we’ll see later in this analysis – young people rely on a variety of digital platforms and services to communicate with the people and organisations that they care about.

Age also plays an important role in determining whether people are more likely to look for entertainment or news online, with younger people placing greater importance on videos and music, while older generations appear to place more emphasis on current affairs.

“Researching how to do things” and “finding new ideas or inspiration” remain other important reasons for going online though, and this finding has particularly important implications for anyone involved in the creation of content for digital environments.

Online time edges up

In a trend that may well be related to the increase in average online motivations, the amount of time that the world spends online has also been increasing over recent months, albeit only gradually.

GWI’s latest research finds that adult internet users now spend an average of 6 hours and 38 minutes online each day.

That’s actually 2 minutes less than the figure we reported this time last year, but it’s higher than any of the averages we’ve seen in the interim, and it’s also higher than the 6 hours and 36 minutes that we reported at the start of 2023 using GWI’s figures for Q3 2022.

The latest figure is also the same as the value we saw in late 2019 – just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic – although it’s interesting to note that average online time was meaningfully higher in the equivalent periods of 2017 and 2018.

But it’s worth remembering that people only have a certain number of hours in each day, and – given that people already spend the equivalent of roughly 40 percent of their waking lives actively engaging with digital devices and services – we might expect to see these figures remain relatively stable for the foreseeable future.

It’s also important to note that GWI incorporated audiences over the age of 65 into its survey starting in Q1 2024, and – with older people tending to spend less time online compared with younger generations – this change brought the overall average in GWI’s figures down compared with the averages for prior periods.

And in fact, if we look at the average time spent online by age group, we see that people under the age of 45 are indeed spending more time online today than they were this time last year.

People aged 45 to 54 are the odd ones out here, with this age group actually spending less time online today than they did 12 months ago.

However, internet users aged 55 to 64 have also increased their online activity over the past year, even if their overall digital activity remains considerably lower than that of younger generations.

AI making gains

At the time of writing, DeepSeek is making plenty of headlines around the world, as AI models vie for supremacy.

Indeed, DeepSeek has topped app download charts in a number of countries over recent weeks – including the United States – relegating previous AI poster child ChatGPT to second place.

However, insights from data.ai reveal that ChatGPT has already built impressive momentum, and the company’s mobile app already averaged more than a quarter of a billion monthly active users between September and November 2024.

ChatGPT was also one of the world’s most downloaded apps during that period, placing eighth in data.ai’s global ranking.

ChatGPT’s mobile app also saw some of the strongest growth across Google Play and Apple iOS app stores, generating the fifth largest quarter-on-quarter increase in downloads of any app between September and November 2024.

And – perhaps more interestingly – the app also saw the third-largest gain in total consumer spend during that period, suggesting that the platform’s users are increasingly happy to pay for ChatGPT’s advanced AI offerings.

Device agnostic

And despite those impressive app stats, ChatGPT appears to enjoy even more success on the web, with both Similarweb and Semrush ranking ChatGPT.com in the world’s 10 most visited web domains at the end of 2024.

Similarweb’s data shows that ChatGPT had an average of 310 million unique monthly visitors between September and November, who generated a combined 3.5 billion visits to the platform’s dotcom domain.

Semrush puts ChatGPT’s unique users even higher though, with the company’s data pointing to more than 560 million unique visitors in November 2024.

And the company offers a higher figure for overall traffic too, with Semrush’s tools reporting 4.75 billion total visits to ChatGPT.com in November 2024 alone.

Who’s winning in AI?

ChatGPT isn’t the only AI tool out there of course, but data up to the end of 2024 – before DeepSeek burst onto the scene – suggests that ChatGPT is still the dominant standalone AI tool.

We’ll come on to explore more integrated offerings in a moment, but first, let’s look at other standalone models.

Clickstream data from Similarweb indicates that Google’s Gemini was the second most popular standalone AI service on the web between September and November 2024, with gemini.google.com attracting an average of more than 60 million unique monthly visitors during that period.

However, that’s still 5 times fewer than the 310 million figure that Similarweb reports for ChatGPT during the same period.

Meanwhile, intelligence from data.ai indicates that Gemini’s standalone mobile app had 30 million monthly active users between September and November 2024, which suggests that its active user base is still eight times smaller than that of ChatGPT.

Microsoft’s Copilot was another top performer towards the end of 2024, but Similarweb reports an average of just 18 million unique visitors per month to copilot.microsoft.com between September and November.

Search-focused Perplexity.ai attracted around 12.7 million unique monthly visitors during the same period, while Claude.ai attracted just over 10 million unique visitors each month.

But while there are plenty of other impressive AI tools out there, it seems that no other standalone service attracted more than 10 million unique monthly visitors by the end of 2024.

Having said that, data.ai’s analysis indicates that the apps of a number of AI powered chatbots – notably Chai and PolyAI (recently renamed PolyBuzz) – now attract tens of millions of active users each month.

However, these services focus primarily on “chatting” with AI-generated characters, and PolyBuzz in particular seems to highlight the “adult” nature of the interactions that its platform’s characters offer.

But to give an idea of how quickly things can change in the world of AI, Similarweb’s tools indicate that DeepSeek.com had just 450,000 unique visitors in October 2024.

That figure rose to 800,000 in November, and then surged to 2.8 million in December – the latest month for which data are available at the time of writing.

But looking ahead, Google Trends data indicates that search interest for DeepSeek increased by a factor of 100x between December 2024 and January 2025, and while that interest fell by 60 percent in just three days from its peak on January 28th to January 31st, we should expect to see DeepSeek deliver some significantly bigger numbers for January 2025.

Integrated AI

Stats for standalone tools don’t offer the most representative view of AI adoption though, because much of the current AI activity happens “behind the scenes”, within broader service offerings.

However, it’s unclear exactly how many people make use of tools like Gemini and Copilot, which is why it’s so difficult to quantify the extent to which AI is already a part of people’s everyday lives.

For example, Gemini is now widely available to the 3 billion users of Google Workspace, and Sundar Pichai has publicly stated that the company is integrating AI models into all of Google’s products.

However, the company hasn’t publicly stated how many people actually make use of Gemini within the company’s portfolio of products.

Elsewhere, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is equally bullish on AI, noting in the opening paragraph of his remarks about the company’s FY25 Q2 results in January 2025 that “[a]lready, our AI business has surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, up 175% year-over-year.”

But once again, the company didn’t offer any clear details of exactly how many individuals are using Microsoft’s Copilot tools.

Meta has been a bit more forthcoming with AI user numbers though.

During the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call, Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, stated that “Meta AI usage continues to scale, with more than 700 million monthly actives.”

However, “Meta AI” is the default service offered when Facebook or Instagram users try to search for anything on those platforms – even if they’re just looking for a friend’s account.

As a result, it’s unclear how many of those 700 million users are actively seeking out AI offerings, and how many are simply looking for the latest memes.

But looking more broadly, products like Canva and Grammarly also continue to integrate AI functionality into their offerings, meaning that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to escape AI’s influence.

And with AI startups capturing almost half of VC funding in the USA in 2024, there’s every sign that the AI bandwagon will continue to gain momentum in 2025.

Having said that though, just before you get swept away by AI hype, it’s worth considering that Yahoo! still attracts almost 100 million more unique monthly visitors than ChatGPT does.

So, while AI will undoubtedly play an important role in shaping the future of tech, it’s always important to maintain a balance of perspective while exploring digital trends.

TV trends and realities

And on that note, let’s turn our attention to television.

Based on the coverage that Netflix and Disney+ receive in the media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that streaming platforms dominate today’s TV landscape.

However – while there’s no denying the popularity and importance of “OTT” video – people’s TV behaviours don’t actually match that media narrative.

In fact, “linear” TV formats like broadcast and cable continue to account for the majority of the world’s TV time.

TV viewing in context

Across all distribution formats, the world’s internet users spend an average of 3 hours and 13 minutes watching television each day, which includes the time spent with linear TV, streaming platforms, and TV shows saved to recording devices.

For perspective, that figure is 7 minutes higher than the daily average we reported this time last year (+3.8 percent), but it’s also down by roughly 10 minutes per day (-5 percent) compared with the equivalent value from this time two years ago.

However, it’s worth noting that changes in GWI’s methodology – especially the addition of audiences aged 65 and above – may have played a role in shaping these trends over recent quarters.

And just as an aside, it’s interesting to note that people now spend more than twice as long using the internet each day as they spend watching television.

But having said that, streaming TV shows and movies also accounts for a meaningful slice of our daily internet time, and more than 3 in 10 of us also access connected content via our TV sets, so the distinction between these two media is increasingly blurred.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latest data suggest that people are spending considerably less time watching TV today than they spent during the height of Covid lockdowns.

However, the current daily average is actually meaningfully higher than the figures that we saw for most of the last decade, with only 2019 seeing a higher daily average.

And crucially, that’s the case even when we remove the influence of audiences over the age of 65 from these latest figures [note that retirees tend to watch considerably more TV than younger generations do].

But perhaps most tellingly, despite enduring claims that the internet would “kill” TV, a hefty 97.5 percent of internet users watch at least one form of TV each month.

And crucially, that’s still higher than the 97.3 percent who use either a social network or a messaging platform each month.

In other words, these figures suggest that TV is still more popular than social media – albeit only by a fraction.

And I’d recommend you keep that little nugget top of mind as you read the rest of this analysis, because it will have particular salience when we come to explore trends in global ad spend a little bit later.

Streaming still lags

But for marketers, perhaps the biggest surprise in this dataset is the enduring popularity of “traditional” TV.

More specifically, the latest research from GWI – which covers 54 of the world’s largest economies – shows that linear TV accounts for close to 57 percent of total TV time today, compared with just over 43 percent for streaming platforms.

Indeed, it’s only amongst audiences aged 16 to 24 that streaming accounts for more than half of TV viewing time, and even then, OTT’s share only accounts for about 51 percent of the daily total.

Meanwhile, linear TV is still significantly more popular than streaming amongst older age groups, with people aged 55 to 64 spending more than two-thirds of their TV time watching broadcast and cable channels.

Age matters

These demographic trends have particular importance for marketers – as well as for the TV industry – because people aged 55 to 64 watch roughly 25 percent more TV than people aged 16 to 24 do.

The youngest cohort in GWI’s survey currently spends a combined 2 hours and 44 minutes watching all types of television each day, which is almost half an hour less than the overall average.

And for reference, streaming accounts for 1 hour and 24 minutes of that total, compared with 1 hour and 20 minutes for linear TV formats.

Having said that, despite their lower overall viewing time, younger people are actually the most likely to watch at least some television, with only 2 percent of GWI’s survey audience in this age group saying that they don’t watch any type of TV.

Meanwhile, despite their generation’s relatively high levels of viewing time, people aged 55 to 64 are the most likely to “avoid” TV, with 3.1 percent of respondents in this cohort saying that they don’t watch any kind of television.

That’s still only a tiny fraction of the total though, and – critically – TV ads are still the primary source of brand discovery for internet users aged 55 to 64, ahead of search engines, word of mouth, and any type of online advertising (more on this later).

Watching the pennies

If we remove the influence of people aged 65 and above – who are considerably less likely to watch OTT video than younger age groups – we can see that streaming’s share of total TV time has actually increased slightly over the past couple of years.

Back in Q4 2022 – just after a change in GWI’s methodology – streaming’s share of TV time amongst audiences aged 16 to 64 stood at 44.0 percent, whereas that figure has climbed to 44.5 percent today.

However, the share of internet users who pay for a subscription to a TV or movie streaming platform like Netflix has remained relatively static since the height of Covid lockdowns.

As you might expect, there have been some minor fluctuations over time, but GWI’s quarterly figures have hovered in the range of 30 to 32 percent for most of the past 4 years.

Are you still watching?

On one hand, that’s encouraging news for streaming companies, because it suggests that people didn’t cancel their subscriptions en masse after the end of lockdown.

But on the other hand, data suggests that just one in three streamers currently pays for the content that they watch.

And for comparison, GWI’s research finds that close to 92 percent of internet users watch some form of streaming TV each month, which is close to three times higher than the 31.5 percent who say that they pay for a subscription.

Having said that, it’s important to remember that – in most cases – only one person will pay for their household’s access to a particular streaming platform though, so these figures don’t imply that people are relying only on free streaming content, or that they’re inappropriately sharing OTT passwords.

For context, market leader Netflix’s Q4 2024 earnings results showed that the company had just over 300 million subscribers.

And while figures vary significantly from country to country, the latest data from the United Nations suggest that – at a worldwide level – the “average” household is home to about 3.7 people.

That figure tends to be meaningfully lower in wealthier countries though, where the majority of Netflix subscribers are likely to live.

So, all things considered, we might deduce that roughly a billion people currently have “legitimate” access to a paid Netflix subscription.

But given that nearly 92 percent of the world’s connected adults currently watch streaming TV each month, data suggests that there may still be considerable potential for growth in paid streaming – even for the market leader.

However, the key question for marketers is whether that potential growth will come from ad-free paid subscriptions, or whether ad-supported plans might come to dominate the next phase of streaming’s growth.

Brand discovery

And that brings us neatly on to trends in how people are discovering brands today.

Overall, GWI’s research shows that the typical adult internet user discovers brands and products through an average of 5.8 different sources.

That figure has remained relatively stable over the past 3 years, but there have been some interesting – albeit subtle – changes in the sources that have the greatest influence.

Searching for success

At a worldwide level, search engines remain the primary source of brand awareness for the world’s connected consumers, with 32.8 percent of GWI’s survey base saying that they discover new brands and products via online search.

TV ads aren’t far behind though, with 32.3 percent of respondents citing this channel.

Word-of-mouth recommendations rank third, with just under 3 in 10 respondents selecting this answer option, while social media ads come a close fourth, at 29.7 percent.

Brand websites round out the top five sources of brand and product awareness, with 25.8 percent of respondents citing this channel.

And just for clarity, note that respondents could choose more than one answer option in this survey question.

Bigger and better

Interestingly though, while the average number of sources has remained relatively stable at around 5.8, the number of people citing each of the top 5 channels has actually increased steadily over the past two years.

For example, the number of people who say that they discover brands and products via search engines has grown from 30.6 percent in Q3 2022, to 32.8 percent in Q3 2024.

That may not sound like a huge jump, but that 2.2 percentage point increase equates to a relative increase of 7.2 percent.

And we see similar trends for TV ads, word-of-mouth recommendations, social media ads, and brand websites.

Amongst these sources, social media has seen the most significant increase over the past two years, with the current 29.7 percent a relative 11.7 percent higher than the 26.6 percent figure we saw in Q3 2022.

The mix is the fix

But the key takeaway for me in this brand discovery data is that no single source introduces brands to more than one-third of adult internet users.

Even the top channel – search engines – is only cited as a source of brand awareness by 32.8 percent of respondents, meaning that it’s imperative for marketers to embrace a mix of different channels in order to achieve their objectives.

Moreover, the data suggests that marketers should continue to balance both online and offline channels.

GWI’s latest data indicate that a combination of digital advertising across channels like search, social media, online video, and banners will only introduce your brand to about two-thirds of the world’s internet users, so – even amongst connected audiences – digital advertising isn’t a panacea.

Awareness generation

But it’s critical to note that the relative importance of different marketing channels varies meaningfully by age.

For example, social media ads are the number one source of brand awareness amongst internet users aged 16 to 34.

However, despite the channel taking top spot, fewer than one in three respondents in this age group cited social media ads as a source of brand and product discovery.

For perspective, search engines rank second in this age group, while TV ads place third.

Things start to look different once audiences pass the age of 35 though, with search engines topping the rankings for internet users aged 35 to 54.

TV ads rank second amongst this cohort, while social media advertising starts to slip down the rankings.

Meanwhile, TV ads top the rankings for audiences aged 55 and above.

And while search engines remain near the top of the ranking for this demographic, social media ads fall quite a bit further down the list.

Indeed, ads on social platforms only rank sixth amongst audiences aged 55 to 64, and they don’t even appear in the top ten amongst audiences aged 65 and above.

Mixing things up

So how can marketers go about building the most robust mix of channels?

Of course, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer to that question, and every marketer needs to explore and understand the behaviours of their specific audience.

And critically, all of our research shows that people’s behaviours vary meaningfully by geography, by age, and even by gender.

So, here are a few suggestions of things you might want to consider:

Influence: Which channels does your audience say have the greatest influence when it comes to discovering and researching brands, products and services? You’ll find data for both these kinds of behaviour in our local country reports, but be sure to explore differences by age too (GWI’s tools can also be a great help here).

Time: How much time does your audience spend using each channel? For example, on average around the world, people aged 16 to 24 spend more than three times longer using social media each day than people aged 65 and above do. Conversely, retirees spend more than 1.5 times as long watching television each day as teenagers do.

Platform: Within each medium, which specific “platforms” does your audience use or prefer? For example, young people are more likely to identify Instagram as their favourite social media platform, whereas older generations are more likely to prefer WhatsApp and Facebook.

Needstate: Which platforms offer the most conducive environment for you to deliver your specific marketing messages? Things to think about here include the advertising formats that each platform offers, where and when in their lives people might be using the platform (e.g. sitting on the bus, or relaxing on the sofa), and the audience’s likely “state of mind” when using that platform (e.g. “escapism”, “curiosity”, “outcome oriented”).

Global advertising trends

But with that, let’s turn our attention to how marketers can promote discovery.

Statista’s Market Insights data shows that the world’s marketers spent close to US$1.1 trillion on ads in 2024, with global spend increasing by $75 billion – 7.3 percent – compared with 2023 levels.

Moreover, Statista’s data indicates that global ad spend has increased by more than 50 percent since 2019, with digital advertising responsible for the vast majority of that increase.

Ad spend vs GDP

These latest figures suggest that advertising now accounts for roughly 1 percent of global GDP, although that figure varies considerably by country.

For example, Statista’s data suggests that the UK sees some of the highest relative levels of spend, with advertising investments equivalent to 1.66 percent of the country’s total GDP.

Similarly, ad spend in the USA equates to almost 1.5 percent of GDP, while Japan and China also see relatively high rates of investment.

However, at the other end of the spectrum, ad spend in Pakistan equates to just 0.18 percent of GDP, while figures are also below a quarter of a percent in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Changing channels

Digital channels now account for 72.7 percent of worldwide ad investment, with online spend exceeding US$790 billion in 2024.

And these latest figures are testament to the dramatic shift in the balance of advertising spend since the outbreak of Covid-19.

As recently as 2018, digital channels account for just under half of global ad spend.

By 2019, that figure had grown to 54.3 percent, but share then jumped by a relative 13 percent in 2020, as Covid lockdowns drove marketers to embrace a markedly different mix of channels.

However, marketing spend didn’t then revert to pre-Covid patterns after the easing of restrictions, and digital has continued to take share from “offline” channels every year since.

Absolute levels of digital spend continue to enjoy double-digital growth too, with Statista reporting a year-on-year increase of 10.3 percent (+$74 billion) between 2023 and 2024.

And in fact, digital ad spend has more than doubled since 2019, with Statista reporting a hefty 30-percent jump in total spend between 2020 and 2021.

Considered investments

The relative ease and cost of buying online ads may help to explain digital’s rapid ascent, especially when we consider the role that self-service social media advertising plays for small and medium-sized businesses.

However, the imbalance we see between investments in online and offline channels doesn’t actually match the role that each channel plays in delivering marketing objectives.

For example, while GWI’s research shows that digital marketing activities introduce brands and products to more than 9 in 10 adult internet users, offline channels still offer powerful opportunities to influence the world’s consumers.

Indeed, GWI’s data indicates that nearly three-quarters of internet users – 73 percent – still regularly discover new brands and products through “traditional” media like TV, print, and radio.

And with ad spend continuing to move away from these media, you may find that companies selling placements on “traditional” media offer increasingly competitive opportunities to reach the audiences that matter to your brand.

So, if you have the resources to embrace channels like TV, you might want to think about recalibrating your mix so that it reflects the realities of your audiences’ behaviours, as well as the associated costs of achieving your objectives.

Quantifying audience value

For added perspective, Statista reports that – across all channels, both online and offline – marketers spend an average of US$140 per head of population on advertising.

However, that average varies significantly from market to market.

The United States sees the highest levels of ad spend per capita, with the country’s total ad investments equivalent to US$1,246 per person in 2024.

Per capita spend is also relatively high in the UK, where marketers spend an average of US$876 on ads per person, per year.

However, the equivalent figures are considerably lower across less developed economies.

For example, ad spend in Mexico equated to less than US$80 per head in 2024, and the figure was less than $3 per person in Pakistan.

The state of digital advertising

Returning our attention to digital ads, data shows that the balance of spend across platforms and technologies continues to evolve.

For example, mobile continues to claim an ever greater share of spend compared with desktop, with Statista’s latest figures indicating that mobile accounted for almost two-thirds of digital investments in 2024.

As always, the balance varies meaningfully by country – as you can see in our full report – but the overall trend is clearly towards mobile, with 2024’s figure of 65.3 percent already meaningfully higher than the 52.7 percent that Statista reports for 2019.

Programmatic ads

On the supply side, programmatic services also continue to gain momentum, with Statista’s Advertising & Media Market data putting dynamic distribution’s share at 82.4 percent of spend in 2024.

That share figure increased by a relative 1.6 percent over the past 12 months, while 2024’s figure is 8.6 percent higher than the 75.9 percent that the company reports for 2019.

In total, businesses spent more than US$650 billion on programmatic placements in 2024, with that absolute spend figure more than 12 percent higher than the total for the previous year.

Search still finding favour

Search continues to attract the lion’s share of digital channel revenues, with Statista attributing 40 percent of 2024 digital spend to online search platforms.

It’s interesting to note that search’s share of digital spend dipped slightly after the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, but platforms like Google have seen their share of the digital pie increase every year since.

Overall, search platforms earned more than US$316 billion in ad revenue during 2024, with that total more than 12 percent higher than the equivalent figure for 2023.

There are some warning signs in the data though, with Skai reporting that spend on search ads in the last three months of 2024 was actually 2 percent lower than spend in the equivalent period of 2023.

Moreover, the number of search impressions served saw an even bigger drop, with Skai’s analysis pointing to a 14 percent year-on-year decline between Q4 2023 and Q4 2024.

However, click-through rates improved significantly during that same period, from 1.6 percent in Q4 2023, to 1.86 percent in the last three months of 2024.

On a relative basis, that’s a 16 percent improvement in search clicks, which helps to explain why the average cost per click (CPC) only declined by US$0.01 during the same period.

Shopping around

Meanwhile, it’s particularly interesting to note the rise of advertising on online retail platforms like Amazon.

Statista reports that online retail platform advertising accounted for more than 1 in 5 digital ad dollars around the world last year, with these channels claiming 21.2 percent of global digital ad spend in 2024.

And for perspective, that figure is almost double the 10.9 percent share that these platforms claimed in 2019.

In total, Statista reports that online retailers earned more than US$167 billion from ad placements on their platforms in 2024, suggesting that this channel is increasingly important for consumer goods marketing.

Social climbing

Statista’s data suggests that 2024 was a particularly good year for social media platforms too, with global spend on social media ads increasing by 15 percent compared with 2023.

Figures indicate that marketers spent close to a quarter of a trillion US dollars on social media ads in 2024, with these placements responsible for more than 3 in every 10 dollars spent on digital advertising.

And if we compare these social media ad spend figures with our latest data for social media user identities, the data suggest that the world’s marketers spend an average of US$46.47 per user to reach social audiences.

Once again, that figure varies meaningfully by country though, from a hefty US$335 per user in the United States, to just 86 cents (USD) in Pakistan.

However, the latest data from Skai suggests that average social media CPMs slipped in Q4 2024 compared with the same period a year ago.

The company’s analysis of billions of dollars of ad spend indicates that advertisers spent an average of US$5.69 to deliver 1,000 ad impressions on social platforms between October and December 2024, which was 4.4 percent lower than the US$5.83 they spent in the 2023 “holiday” quarter.

On the other hand though, Skai’s data also shows that the total number of impressions served across social platforms in Q4 2024 was roughly 4 percent higher than the figure for the same period a year earlier.

And similarly, the company’s analysis indicates that total spend on social media ads in the last three months of 2024 was roughly 2 percent higher than spend in the final quarter of 2023.

Alphabet’s other bets

Alphabet continues to claim the lion’s share of global ad revenues thanks to the company’s paid search placements, but Google Search isn’t the only winner in the company’s stable.

Indeed, while search still accounts for more than half of Google’s revenues, Alphabet’s other products have been attracting an ever greater share of their respective markets.

Android recapturing ground

For starters, Android appears to have regained ground over the past year.

Back in December 2023, Statcounter reported that smartphones running the Android operating system accounted for 70.48 percent of the world’s mobile web traffic, with that figure amongst the lowest we’d seen since 2015.

However, that share figure bounced back to 73.49 percent in December 2024, delivering the platform’s highest value since September 2020.

Android performs particularly well in India, where the operating systems power more than 95 percent of all mobile devices accessing the web.

And on an equally positive note, Android accounts for more than 90 percent of mobile web traffic in Greece and Argentina.

However, Google’s mobile OS is significantly less popular in Japan, where it powers fewer than 1 in 3 of the mobile handsets accessing the web.

Android also struggles in the USA and the Nordics, while its share remains below 50 percent in the UK too.

Polished Chrome

But talking of web traffic, it’s interesting to see Google’s Chrome browser back on the ascent.

Chrome started dominating global web activity in 2016, but – while it has remained the clear market leader ever since – the browser’s share growth stagnated between 2018 and 2023.

That appears to have changed over the past 12 months though, with Chrome’s share increasing by a relative 5.6 percent between December 2023 and December 2024.

At a worldwide level, Chrome now accounts for more than two-thirds of web traffic, with the December 2024 share figure of 68.34 percent the highest we’ve seen in Statcounter’s data.

Similar to the success of Android, Chrome is particularly popular in India, where it’s responsible for more than 90 percent of the country’s web traffic.

However, Chrome’s share is even higher in the Philippines, where the browser claims roughly 94 percent market share.

Chrome isn’t quite so dominant everywhere though, even if it’s almost always the most popular choice.

For example, Chrome accounts for less than half of all web traffic in Switzerland, China, Russia, and the UK.

Email is still essential

And there’s more good news for Alphabet in our next section too, with email continuing to play a central role in the world’s online activities.

For perspective, the latest intelligence from data.ai indicates that Gmail is still the world’s leading email provider, with roughly 2 billion handsets accessing the platform’s mobile app each month.

And for added context, that figure doesn’t include the people who access Gmail accounts via the “integrated” email inbox on iPhone inboxes, nor does it include people who use Gmail in web browsers.

However, despite these impressive numbers, email is considerably bigger than Gmail.

Get the message

Let’s start by clearing up some misconceptions, because marketers often have a distorted perspective on email use, especially when it comes to younger audiences.

At a worldwide level, GWI’s regular research finds that email remains one of the most popular connected services, with 75 percent of online adults saying that they use email at least once per month.

For context, that means the world’s internet users are more likely to check their emails than they are to go online to shop, to listen to music, or to read the news.

Moreover, the past two years have seen a steady increase in the share of internet users who say they use email each month.

It’s important to acknowledge the fact that the addition of audiences aged 65 and above will have accelerated these increases after Q1 2024, but email use was already on the ascent before that change in GWI’s demographic coverage.

Beware of stereotypes

And crucially, while GWI’s data suggests that retirees may indeed be more likely to use email than teenagers, email use is actually relatively consistent across all age groups between 16 and 64.

However, you may be surprised to learn that internet users aged 16 to 24 are actually the demographic that is most likely to use email amongst all working-age adults.

In other words, yes: young people still use email.

And moreover, email use is actually increasing amongst these younger age groups too.

So, don’t let click-bait fool you; always remember to check reliable data, and explore what your audiences are really doing online.

Device trends for 2025

The number of people using laptops and desktops to access the internet continues to decline, with just 61.5 percent of online adults using these devices to access connected services in Q3 2024.

That’s only slightly lower than the 61.8 percent figure that we reported this time last year, but it’s quite a lot lower than the figures we saw at the start of this decade.

For example, more than 7 in 10 internet users – 72.3 percent – still went online via laptop and desktop devices in Q1 2020, with 66 percent saying that they used their own personal device to do so.

Today, that figure has fallen to 53.6 percent, while 26.8 percent use a laptop or desktop provided by their employer (note that roughly 19 percent of respondents use both their own computer and one provided by their place of work).

However, while marketers will want to keep an eye on these trends, recent declines mask the continued importance of laptops and desktops for more than 6 in 10 connected adults.

Geographic variations

GWI’s research suggests that computers continue to be a popular choice across much of Europe, with more than three-quarters of the region’s internet users (75.5 percent) saying that they continue to use laptops and desktops to go online today.

That figure is only slightly lower in the United States too, with 72.7 percent of American internet users saying that they still use computers to access the internet.

Conversely, these devices are significantly less prevalent across much of Africa and Asia, with fewer than half of Indian internet users saying that they use laptops or desktops to access connected content and services.

People in South-East Asia are also less likely to use computers for their online activities, with Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand all falling below the global average.

There are exceptions to these regional trends though, with 79.1 percent of adult internet users in South Africa saying that they use computers for at least some of their connected activities.

Mobile activity

But the move to mobile is also clearly evident in Statcounter’s latest data, with the company’s analysis indicating that mobiles accounted for more than 63 percent of web page requests in December 2024.

That figure is almost double the 31.79 percent that we saw this time ten years ago, and while device shares do tend to fluctuate over time, there’s still a clear trend in favour of mobile devices when it comes to how people access the web.

However, for added context, it’s interesting to note that web browsing only accounts for a small proportion of total smartphone activity.

The latest intelligence from data.ai indicates that the world’s mobile users spend less than 6 percent of their total smartphone time using browsers and search engine apps, which illustrates just how important “native” apps have become to the mobile environment.

But web browsing accounts for an even smaller share of cellular data traffic, with Ericsson’s latest analysis revealing that apps in this category currently only account for 2.09 exabytes (EB) per month, out of a total of close to 177 EB.

For perspective, Ericsson’s figures suggest that the typical smartphone only consumes about 300 MB of mobile data per month for web browsing activities, out of a monthly average of 21.6 GB per device.

Device demographics

Age also plays a role in determining how likely people are to use different devices for their online activities.

Overall, younger people are less likely to use computers, whereas older people have a stronger tendency towards devices with larger screens and more tactile interfaces.

Mobiles are still the most popular devices across all age groups, but men over the age of 65 are actually more likely to use computers to access the internet than they are to use a mobile.

Interestingly, there are tangible differences in device preference by gender across all age groups, but those differences appear to become more pronounced with age.

Time spent by device

However, despite the difference in overall adoption, it’s interesting to note that the share of time attributable to each class of device is more balanced.

On average, internet users spend 3 hours and 46 minutes per day using the internet on mobile devices, compared with an average of 2 hours and 52 minutes per day using the internet on computers.

Relatively speaking, this means that computers account for just under 57 percent of total online activity, compared with just over 43 percent for mobiles.

That share balance has evolved meaningfully over recent years though, and as recently as 2018, computers were still the dominant device category when it came to share of online time.

The use of computers in the workplace will likely mean that laptops and desktops continue to play an important role in overall internet access for the foreseeable future, but we can expect the trend towards mobile devices to continue when it comes to personal internet use.

Having said that, data from Statista indicates that computers still account for close to half of all ecommerce purchases.

Once again, a trend towards mobile is evident in this data, but even the latest figures show that ecommerce merchants would be missing out on almost half of the potential market if they didn’t cater to desktop shoppers too.

So, as I’ve suggested in previous years, it seems the optimum device strategy is still mobile first, but not mobile only.

Accelerated access

One of the factors that may be fuelling the “move to mobile” is the rapid acceleration of mobile data speeds.

For perspective, figures from data.ai suggest that the world spends close to 50 million years of combined human time using mobile apps every month, but none of us likes to waste any time waiting for content to load.

However, the good news is that mobile networks are getting noticeably faster, with the typical user seeing download speeds improve by more than 25 percent over the past 12 months.

Indeed, the latest Speedtest results from Ookla reveal that – at a worldwide level – the typical mobile user now enjoys cellular data bandwidth of 61.52 Mbps.

Mobile internet speeds

The expansion of 5G networks around the world continues to deliver significant improvements in mobile internet speeds too, and Ookla’s data shows that median cellular download speeds have increased by more than 80 percent over the past two years alone

And in fact, median cellular data download speeds now exceed 250 Mbps in a total of three countries – all in the Arabian Gulf – while the median exceeds 100 Mbps in a total of 26 countries.

The United Arab Emirates boasts the fastest mobile connections in this latest round of data, with the typical mobile user now enjoying impressive bandwidth of 441.89 Mbps.

Moreover, the speed of cellular data transfers outpaced that of fixed internet connections in 32 out of 111 countries in November 2024.

The Maldives sees the greatest imbalance in favour of mobile bandwidth, with the country’s cellular data connections more than 7 times faster than its fixed data network.

However, there are some less favourable trends in this year’s data too.

For example, the median cellular data transfer rate in Myanmar has fallen by almost 80 percent over the past 12 months, and the country’s mobile users now struggle with median bandwidth of just 5.09 Mbps.

Afghanistan’s mobile users fare only marginally better too, with median cellular download rates in the country barely reaching 8 Mbps.

The remaining 109 countries in Ookla’s latest mobile dataset all see median download speeds in excess of 10 Mbps, with 92 countries enjoying averages in excess of 25 Mbps.

Fixed internet connections

But despite these impressive numbers, Ookla’s data shows that fixed internet connections still tend to be faster than cellular data networks.

At a worldwide level, fixed connections delivered median bandwidth of more than 95 Mbps in November 2024, with that figure increasing by just under 6 percent over the past 12 months.

Upload speeds have increased more rapidly though, with the current median of 51.49 Mbps almost 25 percent higher than the figures we saw a year ago.

For comparison, fixed connections deliver an average 55 percent advantage over cellular networks when it comes to download speeds, but when it comes to upload speeds, fixed connections are a hefty 4.4 times faster.

Singapore currently claims the fastest download speeds on fixed connections, with internet users in the Lion City enjoying median fixed bandwidth of 324.46 Mbps.

Hong Kong and the UAE also enjoy speedy fixed connections though, with wired networks in both countries delivering median download speeds in excess of 300 Mbps.

Fixed connections aren’t always synonymous with faster downloads though, and Ookla’s data shows that medians still remain below 10 Mbps in 8 out of 156 countries.

Cuba’s internet users suffer from the slowest fixed connections, with median bandwidth in the country still below 3 Mbps.

Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan are only just ahead though, with median download speeds in all three countries languishing in the 3.5 Mbps range.

So, while overall internet adoption continues to climb, it seems there’s still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to ensuring quality of access.

Mobile data consumption

One of the consequences of faster mobile internet speeds has been a significant increase in the amount of mobile data consumed by the world’s smartphone users.

Indeed, analysis from Ericsson shows that the amount of data transferred over cellular data networks has increased more than sevenfold in just the past 6 years.

More specifically, the company’s intelligence points to a monthly average of 21.78 exabytes (EB) of data transfer back in Q3 2018, when the typical smartphone user consumed just 4.9 GB of cellular data per month.

By Q3 2024, that global total had jumped to an average of 157.16 EB per month, with each handset consuming an average of 21.6 GB per month.

Much of this growth has been fuelled by the rise of mobile video, with Ericsson reporting that video applications account for more than 111 EB per month, out of total smartphone-attributable traffic of close to 147 EB.

For perspective, Ericsson’s figures reveal that video now accounts for more than three-quarters of all cellular data traffic, or three times more than all other categories combined.

Social networking claims the next largest share of cellular traffic, with apps in this category responsible for more than 11.5 EB of data each month.

Mobile data consumption in context

If you’re struggling to get your head around “exabytes”, you might find it helpful to know that 111 EB is equal to 111 billion gigabytes, or 111 trillion megabytes.

In other words, if you wanted to store all of the video data that gets transferred over cellular networks in just one month on conventional DVDs, you’d need somewhere in the region of 23.5 billion discs.

And if you wanted to pile each of those discs one on top of the other, your stack would be well over 28,000 kilometres high.

For reference, the Kármán line – which is commonly viewed as the outer limit of Earth, where “space” begins – is barely 100 kilometres above sea level.

And that’s just for one month’s worth of video data.

Indeed, based on current trends, the stack of DVDs you’d need to store all of the video data that will be transferred over cellular networks in 2025 would reach the moon.

The environmental impact of mobile video

But while these numbers make for great trivia, there’s also a darker side to these eye-watering stats.

According to a report from GSMA Intelligence, mobile networks used on average 0.13 kWh of energy to transfer 1 GB of data in 2021.

Networks may have improved efficiency since then of course, but if we use that figure as a benchmark, current averages indicate that our mobile video habits consume more than 14.4 billion kWh of energy every month.

And what’s more, that figure only accounts for the energy required to transfer the video data itself, ignoring other critical factors such as the energy required to power the world’s 7.4 billion smartphone handsets, and the power required to retrieve the video data from platforms’ servers.

Approaches to generating electricity vary meaningfully around the world (e.g. nuclear, coal, renewables, etc.), so it’s exceptionally difficult to calculate the associated carbon footprint of this energy consumption.

However, for perspective, the Mayor of London reports that the city consumed a combined total of 36.7 billion kWh of electricity for the whole of 2022 across domestic, industrial, commercial, and electric rail needs, which equates to an average of just over 3 billion kWh each month.

And while London’s energy consumption might have increased in the past couple of years, these figures suggest that the world’s smartphone video activity consumes almost 5 times more electricity than the whole of London does.

So, you may want to keep those numbers in mind the next time you find yourself doomscrolling a never-ending video feed.

The state of social media in 2025

But talking of feeds, let’s turn our attention to social platforms.

Analysis by the Kepios team that researches the Global Digital Reports series indicates that social media adoption continues to increase.

The latest data indicate that there are now 5.24 billion active social media user identities around the world, with that total increasing by 4.1 percent over the past 12 months.

That’s slightly slower than the typical growth rates we’ve seen over the past decade, but we can expect growth to slow from hereon, especially now that user identities equate to more than 60 percent of the global population.

Social media adoption rates in context

As always, it’s important to remember that our “user identities” figures are based on active user accounts, and while our methodology strives to remove duplicates across platforms, these figures may not be perfectly representative of unique individuals.

Having said that, our analysis of reputable third-party data from companies like GWI, data.ai, Similarweb, and Semrush suggests that the margin of error between our global “user identities” total and the “real” human user total is likely within 1 or 2 percentage points.

In particular, GWI’s research finds that 97.3 percent of connected adults use at least one social network or messaging platform each month.

However, we cannot apply this figure to the total internet user base, because of the minimum age thresholds imposed by most social platforms.

As a result, we can expect the share of all internet users (regardless of age) who do use social media to be slightly lower than that GWI figure for adult adoption.

And that aligns neatly with our own research, which points to a social media adoption rate of 94.2 percent of all internet users.

However, adoption rates vary meaningfully around the world.

For example, data suggest that barely 3 in 10 internet users in Middle Africa use social media today, with well under half of the connected population in Sub-Saharan Africa using social media at the start of 2025.

It’s important to highlight that very few “commercial” figures are available for the use of messaging platforms like WhatsApp across these regions though, and we suspect that the data we do have for much of Sub-Saharan Africa significantly underrepresents actual social media adoption.

At the other end of the scale, almost 97 percent of the connected population in Eastern Asia uses social media today, thanks to the near ubiquitous use of WeChat amongst internet users in China.

Countries in Central and Southern America also see strong rates of social media adoption, as do countries across the EU and the UK.

Reasons for using social media

But why have social media platforms become so popular?

Part of the answer may lie in the reasons why people turn to social platforms in the first place.

The latest research from GWI indicates that “keeping in touch with friends and family” remains the primary reason for using social media today, but it’s perhaps surprising to learn that barely half of active social media users (50.8 percent) cite this as a relevant motivation.

“Filling spare time” ranks second at a global level, which may help to explain why “endless feeds” have become such a common feature of social media apps.

And despite regular assertions to the contrary by the platforms, news retains considerable appeal on social media.

Indeed, more than 1 in 3 active social users (34.5 percent) say that “reading news stories” is one of the main reasons why they visit social platforms (more on this later).

On average, the world’s adults cite 4.66 “primary” reasons for using social media today, with that figure remaining largely stable over the past two years.

However, the data does suggest a slight increase over recent quarters, which may suggest that social media’s role in our daily lives continues to expand.

Reasons for using social media by age

Interestingly, “keeping in touch with friends and family” is the top social motivation across all age groups in GWI’s survey.

Its relative importance does change across the generations though.

For example, just 48.3 percent of active social media users between the ages of 16 and 24 choose this answer option in GWI’s latest wave of research, whereas that figure climbs to 58.1 percent for users over the age of 65.

Meanwhile, younger people are more likely to be interested in staying up to date with “trending topics”, whereas older users tend to place more emphasis on reading news stories.

Who we follow on social media

Despite the fact that “keeping in touch with friends and family” remains the primary reason for using social media, fewer than half of adult social media users say that they follow friends, family, or other people that they know “IRL” on social platforms.

Actors, comedians, and other performers rank second at an overall level, while entertainment, meme, and parody accounts rank third.

However, there are some interesting variations in this data by age.

For example, people in older generations are more likely to say that they follow loved ones and acquaintances on social media, with more than half of active social users over the age of 55 answering in the affirmative.

The appeal of entertainment, meme, and parody accounts drops off quite quickly as people get older though, and this category doesn’t even appear in the top ten amongst social media users aged 55 and above.

Conversely, TV shows and channels are relatively more popular amongst older age groups, ranking second for all age groups aged 35 and above.

It’s also interesting to note that older generations are relatively more likely to follow companies and brands that they’re considering purchasing from, with this category ranking fifth amongst retirees.

However, the biggest takeaway from this age-specific data is that older people are significantly less likely to follow any accounts beyond people they know in real life.

For example, on average, social media users aged 16 to 24 follow accounts in 4.87 categories, but that figure falls to 4.28 for users aged 45 to 54, and just 2.21 for users aged 65 and above.

The role of influencers

It’s also interesting – but perhaps not surprising – to note that the appeal of influencers is largely restricted to younger age groups.

Overall, GWI’s latest data shows that 22 percent of active social media users follow influencers or other experts on social channels.

That figure matches the figure that we reported this time two years ago, but there has been a gentle decline in the percentage of users following these types of accounts over the past year.

However, there are significant variations by age and gender.

At the top end of the scale, more than three in ten women aged 16 to 24 – 30.8 percent – say that follow influencers and other experts on social platforms.

But at the other end of the spectrum, barely 1 in 25 men aged 65 and above – just 4 percent – say that they follow these types of accounts.

And it’s worth highlighting that men of all ages are meaningfully less likely than their female peers to follow influencers and other experts on social media.

But influencers’ appeal also varies significantly by geography.

For example, Filipinos are the most likely to follow these types of social accounts, with almost 45 percent of the country’s adult social media users saying that they follow influencers or other experts.

Influencer accounts are also popular in Brazil, where 41.8 percent of active social adults answered in the affirmative.

At the other end of the scale, Russians appear to be largely disinterested in influencers, with just 6.7 percent of the country’s adult social media users saying that they follow at least one influencer or expert on social platforms.

Turkey and Japan also see low figures for this category, while the relatively low ranking of China may also be worthy of note.

But if we dig a bit deeper into GWI’s social media motivations data, some even more interesting insights emerge.

The next few sections explore some of the trends that caught our attention in this latest round of data.

Brands and social media

Half of all adult users now visit social platforms with the intention of learning more about brands, and to see the content that they publish.

That figure has been creeping up over recent months too, from 47.7 percent in Q4 2022 (just after a revision in GWI’s research methodology) to the 50.0 percent that we see in the most recent survey.

Internet users in less developed economies are particularly likely to visit social platforms to learn more about brands, with almost 70 percent of respondents in Nigeria citing this as a primary reason for using social media.

Indonesia and Brazil rank highly too, with 66.7 percent and 64.6 percent respectively.

However, figures are markedly lower in South Korea and Japan, where fewer than 3 in 10 adult social media users say that they use social media to learn about brands.

The data also shows that women are considerably more likely than men to seek out brands on social media.

Young women are particularly likely to cite brand content as a primary reason for visiting social platforms, with 57 percent of active users age 16 to 24 citing this as a top social motivation.

Conversely, older men show considerably less interest, with barely 1 in 5 men aged 65 and above saying that they actively seek out brands’ content on social platforms.

Top social platforms for brand research

Instagram remains the “top” social channel for brand research, with 62.3 percent of the platform’s active adult users saying that they use the platform to research brands and products.

Facebook ranks second, with 52.5 percent, while TikTok ranks third, with 51.5 percent.

And it’s particularly interesting to note that the figure for TikTok has jumped over the past 2 years, increasing by a relative 36 percent compared with the 37.9 percent that we reported at the start of 2023.

Similarly, the relative importance of brand research for users of X and Pinterest may be of interest to marketers, especially when we consider the demographic nuances of each platform’s audience [note that you’ll find rich details of platform use by age gender in the full report].

Social media for news

As we saw earlier, finding and accessing news content retains significant appeal for the world’s social media users.

And this finding has particular significance, because social platforms frequently assert that news content isn’t important to their users.

For example, in a statement last year, Facebook claimed that:

“We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content… news makes up less than 3 percent of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed.”

However, while the second half of that statement may well be accurate, there’s strong evidence to suggest that people do – in fact – visit Facebook specifically to look for content relating to news and current affairs.

For example, in its excellent Digital News Report 2024, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) found that a hefty 37 percent of online adults across many of the world’s largest economies use Facebook for news.

Moreover, the RISJ reports that Facebook comes out top amongst a large selection of the world’s larger social platforms in terms of its role in helping people find and access news.

[Note that the chart below is taken from our Digital 2024 Global News Report]

Meanwhile, GWI’s latest survey finds that 57.3 percent of active adult Facebook users visit the platform with the intention of keeping up to date with news and current affairs.

And while this figure does vary with age, GWI’s data suggests that more than half of active Facebook users aged 16 to 24 still say that they use the platform to keep up to date with news and current events.

Looking beyond individual platforms, more than 1 in 3 adult social media users (34.5 percent) say that reading news stories is one of the main reasons why they use social platforms.

And interestingly, that figure has remained remarkably consistent over the past two years.

Variance in online news audiences

However, it’s worth highlighting that interest in news increases with age.

Fewer than 3 in 10 social media users aged 16 to 24 (29.1percent) say that finding and consuming news content is one of the primary reasons why they visit social platforms, but that figure rises to more than 4 in 10 (40.6 percent) amongst users aged 55 to 64.

Men are also more likely than women to use social media for news, although this “gender gap” is relatively small.

Social media news activity also varies meaningfully by geography.

Once again, people in less developed economies are the most likely to visit social platforms to find news content, with 56.6 percent of active social media users in Nigeria saying that current affairs content is a top draw.

Similarly, more than half of adult users in Brazil, Turkey, and Greece agree.

Users across the Middle East are less likely to seek out news content on social media though, with less than a quarter of social media users in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt saying that news content has primary appeal.

And yet again, we find South Korea and Japan towards the bottom of these rankings.

If you’d like to dig deeper into trends relating to news and current affairs on social media, dig into our comprehensive (and free!) Digital 2024 Global News Report.

Social media for work

Meanwhile, more than 1 in 3 active social media users say that they use social platforms for work-related activities, with 38.3 percent of GWI’s global respondents answering in the affirmative in the company’s latest round of research.

That average has remained relatively stable over the past two years, although there are signs of a slight increase over the past 12 months.

However, it’s worth highlighting that just 1 in 5 active social media users say that they follow contacts relevant to their work on social channels, and this figure suggests that much of the world’s “professional” social media activity is either “task oriented” (e.g. creating and posting on a work account) or more ad hoc research.

Meanwhile, in something of a contradiction of stereotypes, the youngest generations are not the most likely to use social media for work.

Indeed, people aged 35 to 44 are the most likely to use social media in their professional activities, with more than 45 percent of male social media users in this age group saying that they use social media as part of their job.

And in fact, men of all ages are more likely than their female peers to say that they use social media for work-related activities.

From a geographic perspective, people in less developed economies are the most likely to use social media for work, with almost 2 in 3 active social media users in Nigeria saying that they use social platforms for professional activities.

South Africans and Brazilians also rank highly, with both countries seeing figures in excess of 50 percent.

But once again, we find Japan and South Korea at the other end of the rankings.

Indeed, just 1 in 12 social media users in Japan say that they use social channels for work-related activities, while that figure is just 13.5 percent in Korea.

Social media for sports

And lastly for this closer look at social media motivations, let’s turn our attention to sports.

GWI data suggests that “watching or following sports” isn’t one of the world’s top motivations for using social media, with news, entertainment, and shopping all bigger draws.

However, relative interest in sports content on social media has been growing over recent years, so this topic may still be worthy of a closer look.

Overall, 23.6 percent of adult social media users say that finding content related to sports is one of the main reasons why they visit social platforms.

And that average has increased steadily over the past two years, with the latest figure a relative 8.2 percent higher than the 21.8 percent figure we reported this time two years ago.

True to stereotypes though, men are significantly more likely than women to cite sports as a top draw.

Indeed, GWI’s latest data show that more than 3 in 10 male users – 30.1 percent – say that they visit social platforms to look for sports-related content, which is almost twice as many as the 16.7 percent of female users who agree.

Younger audiences are also more likely to seek out sports content on social media, with interest peaking at 31.6 percent amongst men aged 25 to 34.

Social media time declines

But despite the apparent expansion of social media’s role in our lives, the amount of time that we spend using social platforms has actually declined over the past two years.

GWI’s latest figures indicate that the typical internet user spends 2 hours and 21 minutes using social media each day, which is 10 minutes lower than the figure we reported this time two years ago.

A sustained downward trend finally reversed over the past three months, but only enough to recover two minutes per day, and current daily averages are still lower than the activity levels we saw in 2018, before TikTok and Reels came to dominate the social experience.

Social media activity by age and gender

Women continue to spend meaningfully more time on social media than men across all ages, with the gap most pronounced amongst younger age groups.

GWI reports that women aged 16 to 24 now spend an average of just under 3 hours per day using social platforms, with the current figure 12 minutes lower than the average that we reported for the same demographic this time two years ago.

Men in the same age group have also reduced their daily activity by 12 minutes over the past two years ago, meaning that the “gender gap” amongst these younger users remains at 25 minutes.

However, at the other end of the scale, women between the ages of 55 and 64 actually spend longer using social media today than they did this time two years ago.

GWI’s data shows that this demographic has added 6 minutes to its daily social media activity over the past 24 months, although it’s worth acknowledging that men in the same age group have seen their daily average decline by 4 minutes during the same period.

An expanding platform portfolio

But in something of a contrast to the decline in the time that we spend on social media, we’ve actually seen the number of platforms used by the world’s social audiences increase over the past 12 months.

GWI’s latest wave of research points to a global average of 6.83 platforms per month.

Changes in GWI’s methodology over the past couple of years mean it’s tricky to identify exactly how much change there has been in this figure, but the general trend is clearly one of users embracing a wider variety of platforms in their regular social media activities.

Interestingly, there hasn’t been much change in the overlaps of the audiences of the top platforms though (more on this later), which suggests that increases in the overall average are likely due to people integrating newer platforms into their “regular social repertoire”.

It’s also worth highlighting that averages vary meaningfully from country to country, with users in the UAE visiting an average of 8.62 social platforms each month.

Filipinos and Malaysians also tend to embrace a relatively expansive portfolio of social media apps, for an average of 8.36 and 8.12 platforms per user, per month (respectively).

But we see a very different picture in Japan, where users don’t even manage an average of 3.5 platforms per month.

And similarly, despite high levels of social media adoption in the country, South Korea also falls towards the bottom of this ranking.

When we break the global data down by demographic, young women once again top the rankings, with females aged 16 to 24 saying that they use an average of 7.76 platforms per month.

Their male peers aren’t far behind though, with men in this age group saying that they use an average of 7.71 platforms each month.

Averages are far more subdued at the other end of the generational spectrum though, with women over the age of 65 saying that they use just 3.64 platforms per month, and men in the same age group only averaging 3.28.

Top social media platforms in 2025

But which social media platform comes out on top in 2025?

Well, somewhat frustratingly, there’s no clear answer to that question, because different metrics offer different – and equally valuable – answers.

The platforms also adopt different metrics and varying levels of “secrecy” when it comes to active user numbers, so we can’t reliably compare the companies’ own numbers.

However, the good news is that we’ve gone deep into the data to explore what’s really going on in social media.

Top social platform by active users

Our analysis of data from various third-party sources indicates that YouTube is the most used social media platform at the start of 2025.

For starters, with arch-rival Meta’s tools indicating that 99.3 percent of its users access Meta’s platforms via mobile devices, it’s safe to assume that social media app use figures are highly representative of overall platform use.

And with that in mind, it’s worth exploring data.ai’s latest proprietary figures for social media app use.

Based on Android activity in November 2024, data.ai’s intelligence suggests that YouTube’s active user base is roughly 16 percent larger than that of its next nearest rival, WhatsApp.

For reference, Apple’s privacy restrictions mean that it’s significantly more difficult to track iPhone behaviours – even when users actively want to participate in research – which is why this data only includes Android activity.

However, for reassurance, data from Statcounter indicates that Android powers close to three-quarters (73.5 percent) of all the smartphones in use today, so data for Android handsets is representative of the vast majority of the world’s social media users.

Do note that this ranking does not include data for China though, due to the country’s unique app store system.

Returning to the data, Facebook ranks third, with data.ai’s latest intelligence suggesting that the platform’s user base is roughly 82.2 percent the size of YouTube’s.

Instagram ranks fourth, with an active user index of 72.3, while TikTok rounds out the top five.

However, with an index of just 48.3, data.ai’s figures indicate that TikTok’s active user base was still less than half the size of YouTube’s in November 2024.

The world’s favourite social platform

GWI classes YouTube as a video platform – not a social media platform – so, unfortunately, we’re currently unable to compare its “popularity” against platforms like Facebook and TikTok.

However, on the plus side, this dataset does include insights for China.

And amongst the options included in this question in GWI’s survey, Instagram comes out top, with 16.6 percent of adult social media users identifying it as their favourite social platform.

WhatsApp ranks second at a worldwide level with 16 percent, while Facebook ranks third, with 13.1 percent.

WeChat places fourth with 12 percent, although it’s worth stressing that this is almost entirely due to the platform’s popularity in its home country of China.

Indeed, GWI’s data suggests that barely 1 in 500 social media users outside of China (0.2 percent) identify WeChat as their favourite platform.

And TikTok rounds out the top five here too, with 8.1 percent of the world’s adults identifying ByteDance’s short video service as their favourite social platform.

But for added perspective, it may be interesting to learn that 3.2 percent of adult users still identify X as their favourite social media platform.

And furthermore, despite wild headlines about a purported decline in the popularity of the platform formerly known as Twitter, GWI’s data suggests that X’s appeal has held relatively steady over the past couple of years.

Indeed, the 3.2 percent figure in this year’s data is the same as the proportion of adult social media users who identified X as their favourite social media platform this time last year, and it’s only 0.2 percentage points below the 3.4 percent figure that we reported in our Digital 2023 Global Overview Report.

It’s also interesting to see how social media preferences vary by age and gender.

At a worldwide level, women aged 16 to 44 prefer Instagram, while women over the age of 45 prefer WhatsApp.

These two platforms claim the top spots amongst men too, although WhatsApp takes the lead starting from age 35.

TikTok is the second choice for women aged 16 to 24, but by the age of 35, it slips down to sixth place in the rankings.

However, men are significantly less likely to identify TikTok as their favourite social media platform, and even by the time they reach 25, men are already more likely to prefer Facebook over TikTok.

And the clear takeaway here is to do your due diligence: it’s easy to get swept away by industry hyperbole and media click-bait, but the data tell a much more reliable story about what your audiences are really doing online.

Largest social media advertising audiences

Next up, the data published in the respective platforms’ ad planning tools indicate that YouTube also has the world’s largest social media advertising audience, with the company’s latest data pointing to total potential reach of more than 2.53 billion.

That means YouTube’s audience is roughly 11 percent larger than that of its next nearest rival, Facebook, with Meta’s planning tools indicating global Facebook ad reach of 2.28 billion at the start of 2025.

However, if we focus on audiences over the age of 18, Facebook comes out just ahead of YouTube, but with a difference of just 20 million, the gap is relatively small.

Meanwhile, Instagram comes out ahead of TikTok in the latest adult reach data, with Meta’s tools reporting potential reach of 1.67 billion Instagram users over the age of 18, compared with ByteDance’s reported figure of 1.59 billion for TikTok.

There’s a bit more to the rivalry between these two platforms though, so we’ll come back to these numbers a little later.

Top social platform by time spent

Our complete Digital 2025 Global Overview Report offers various other metrics for comparing social media platforms, but for the purposes of this analysis, we’ll finish up with a look at the total time spent “on platform”.

This data is again informed by intelligence from Sensor Tower’s data.ai, and it shows that YouTube takes the lion’s share of the world’s social media time.

Indeed, the world spends almost twice as much time using YouTube as it spends using the platform’s next nearest rival, TikTok.

WhatsApp and Facebook rank third and fourth, respectively, with both platforms capturing roughly the same amount of total user time each month.

And Instagram places fifth, although the platform’s total monthly user time is barely 42.5 percent that of top-ranked YouTube.

Platforms are not mutually exclusive

So there you have it; various numbers that should help you make sense of which platforms dominate today’s social landscape.

However, there’s another dataset that’s well worth considering when you’re exploring the role of different platforms, and that’s the extent to which their audiences overlap.

And the key takeaway here is that you can reach almost all of the users of any given social platform on at least one other platform.

Indeed, data suggest that barely 1.1 percent of YouTube’s users are unique to the platform, despite it being the world’s largest platform by active users.

Meanwhile, you can reach 99.3 percent of Facebook users on other platforms, and that figure rises to 99.9 percent for TikTok, Snapchat, X, and Telegram.

So, while it’s easy to get swept along by headlines proclaiming stratospheric platform growth and the excitement surrounding “shiny new platforms”, it’s worth remembering that you’ll almost always be able to reach all of these users on various other platforms.

New social platforms

But while we’re on the subject of “shiny new platforms”, let’s take a look at some of the names that have been making headlines over recent months.

Threads

First up, Meta’s newest platform – Threads – has seen remarkable user growth over recent weeks.

In late January 2025, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed that Threads had 320 million monthly active users, of which more than 100 million are active each day.

This latest figure comes just a few weeks after Mosseri reported that the platform had passed the 300 million monthly active user mark, and just 2 months after he announced the platform had reached 275 million MAUs.

And these figures are corroborated by third-party intelligence from data.ai too, which shows similar active user figures for the platform’s mobile app.

Moreover, data.ai reports that Threads topped the active user growth rankings for the period between September and November 2024, meaning that the platform added more new users than any other app during that period.

Threads also ranked second in terms of the increase in its app downloads during that period, with only ChatGPT generating more incremental app downloads over those three months.

Meanwhile, Threads actually ranked fifth overall in terms of absolute download numbers during that same period (as opposed to incremental growth), putting it just behind Facebook.

These figures are already testament to the platform’s growing popularity, but such strong download figures also bode well for its future.

Stitching time

However, as we reported in our Digital 2024 October Global Statshot Report, Threads is still struggling to turn activity into a “habit”.

For example, data.ai’s figures suggest that barely 1 in 4 of the platform’s active users logged in on a daily basis between September and November 2024.

Moreover, people still aren’t spending much time on Threads, and data.ai intelligence indicates that the typical Threads user only spent 39 minutes per month using the platform’s Android app in November.

That’s 25 times less than Instagram users spent using the Instagram app on Android devices, and 7.6 times less than X users spent using X’s Android app during the same period.

However, data.ai reports that the typical Threads session now lasts 1 minute and 40 seconds, which is longer than the average Snapchat session.

So, if Threads can improve its usage frequency, it may well become a force to be reckoned with in the months ahead.

Bluesky

Bluesky Social has enjoyed something of a moment in the sun in recent weeks, with the media reporting that “swathes” of exasperated X users have been turning to the platform for refuge.

However, the data points to more of a trickle than a deluge.

At the time of writing, data indicates that the platform has attracted more than 30 million registered users, but data.ai reported that the app still had fewer than 25 million monthly active users at the end of November 2024.

Having said that, data.ai’s intelligence reveals that Bluesky Social was the fourth-fastest growing app in terms of incremental downloads between September and November last year.

But despite these promising trends, Bluesky appears to be facing similar challenges to those faced by Threads when it comes to turning interest into regular action.

For example, data.ai’s figures show that barely 1 in 5 active users opened the Bluesky app each day between September and November, which is less than half the daily open rate enjoyed by X.

However, the typical Bluesky user opens the platform’s Android app a greater number of times each month than the typical active Threads user opens the Threads Android app, so there’s still some promise in Bluesky’s numbers.

Current growth rates suggest that the platform still has a long way to go before it becomes a “big hitter” in the social media landscape though, so – at least from a marketer’s perspective – it may make more sense to park Bluesky in the “wait and see” bracket for now.

And the rest…

Given recent media excitement surrounding TikTok’s potential ban in the United States – and the apps that might replace it – you’ve doubtless got a few more names on your radar: Lemon8, RedNote / Xiaohongshu, Likee… the list probably goes on.

However, all the data I’ve seen suggests that each of these platforms is still relatively small (<25 million MAU), at least outside of China, where Xiaohongshu has been popular for some time.

But more importantly, as marketers, we really need to ask ourselves why we spend so much time obsessing over the “next big thing”.

For perspective, we already have six platforms that reach more than 1 billion active users each month, and a total of 15 platforms that reach at least 500 million people.

Moreover, you can already reach 99 percent of the users of any of these platforms on at least one other platform.

And it is very, very unlikely that someone will join the internet for the first time today, and go on to download one of these new social apps as their first and only choice.

Indeed, realistically, we can expect almost every new social media user to start their journey with at least one of the more established platforms.

That’s not to say that smaller platforms don’t offer valuable opportunities of course, nor that these newer platforms won’t one day grow to rival today’s leaders.

However, given that you can already reach each of those platforms’ users on other channels, those opportunities have very little to do with potential reach.

So, my advice for marketers in 2025 is to stop worrying about every new platform that makes the headlines.

Rest assured that you can already reach all of the users of those new platforms on existing, more established platforms.

And moreover, I’d wager that you’re struggling to take full advantage of those existing opportunities anyway.

Just as buying a new guitar won’t make me a better musician unless I put in the necessary practice, so jumping onto a “shiny new platform” won’t help you achieve your marketing objectives unless you’re already close to achieving them on existing platforms.

In other words, only when you’ve completely exhausted all of the opportunities on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok do you need to start worrying about that shiny new platform you heard about in the media.

And if you should happen to find yourself in that unlikely position, please do get in touch – I’d love to know your secret.

But on that note, let’s turn our attention to those more “established” platforms.

YouTube trends in 2025

Compared with other social platforms, Alphabet appears to take a relatively conservative approach to reporting ad reach figures for YouTube.

Indeed, the company has only updated its audience figures twice over the past year, although the latest numbers still show that YouTube’s reach continues to grow.

Across the 88 countries for which Google’s tools publish reach numbers for YouTube, the company’s latest data show that YouTube ads now reach at least 2.53 billion users each month.

That figure is up by 40 million (+1.6 percent) compared with this time last year, but at the time of report production, YouTube hadn’t updated these numbers since October, so the quarter-on-quarter figures appear unchanged.

As we saw earlier in this analysis though, YouTube is likely the world’s most used social platform at the start of 2025, with reach across those 88 countries alone equal to more than 30 percent of the world’s population.

And for added perspective, YouTube ads now reach close to 4 in 10 of the world’s adults each month, and more than 45 percent of the world’s internet users.

Reflecting the demographic balance of the internet as a whole, YouTube’s audience skews male, with men aged 25 to 34 accounting for the single greatest share of overall platform reach.

However, it’s interesting to note that YouTube reaches more women than men amongst audiences aged 65 and above.

On a geographic level, India is home to YouTube’s largest country audience, with reported reach in the country rapidly approaching half a billion.

However, on a relative reach basis, figures suggest that YouTube is most popular in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Singapore.

You’ll also find details of YouTube’s top creators and content within our complete Digital 2025 Global Overview Report, which reveal some truly remarkable numbers.

In particular, for anyone without young children, you may be surprised to learn that Baby Shark Dance racked up an incremental 1.5 billion views – and 2 million additional likes – over the past 12 months alone.

Who knew, do do do doo…?

The state of Facebook in 2025

The available data indicate that Facebook remains the world’s second most used social media platform at the start of 2025, once again confounding that enduring myth that Facebook may be “dying”.

For example, third-party intelligence from Sensor Tower’s data.ai suggests that the platform still attracts 2.3 billion users to its mobile app each month.

Moreover, GWI’s research shows that Facebook is still the world’s third-favourite social platform, ranking well ahead of TikTok (although remember that this particular GWI dataset doesn’t include YouTube).

And Meta’s own data suggests that Facebook ads still reach more than 2¼ billion adults each month, with that figure up by 93 million (+4.3 percent) over the past 12 months.

So, no: Facebook most certainly isn’t dead.

Facebook trends to watch in 2025

However, there are some signs of cracks in Facebook’s success.

Indeed, data.ai’s figures show a very slight decline in active Facebook users between August and November

Similarly, the average, total amount of time that people spent using the Facebook Android app in November 2024 was almost 1½ hours less than the average, total amount of time that users spent using the app in August 2024.

And moreover, the average number of monthly sessions also fell during that period, from 304.5 in August 2024, to 280.2 in November 2024.

Facebook’s share of social referrals declines

Meanwhile, Facebook’s share of referrals to third-party websites fell to its lowest recorded level in September 2024, with Meta’s biggest platform responsible for fewer than 6 in 10 social media referrals at a worldwide level over the course of that month.

Referral traffic rebounded slightly between September and December 2024, but – at just 64 percent – the latest levels are still amongst the lowest we’ve seen in Statcounter’s data.

Facebook’s share of social referrals varies meaningfully by country though, with Statcounter’s data suggesting that Meta’s top platform accounts for more than 90 percent of referrals across the Balkans.

However, despite remaining the country’s most widely used social platform, Facebook accounts for a meagre 13.88 percent of social media referrals in Thailand.

And Facebook’s share of referrals is also surprisingly low in Hong Kong, despite the platform continuing to enjoy high levels of active use amongst the territory’s residents.

Facebook engagement tumbles

We’ve also seen meaningful declines in Facebook engagement rates over the past year, with figures from both SocialInsider and Locowise showing distinctly negative gradients over recent months.

And what’s more, trends suggest that marketers should expect to see the performance of their Facebook content continue to decline in 2025 too.

Sadly, the concept of “organic” reach is nothing more than a memory for most marketers, so comparisons with Page followers can often be disheartening.

However, even when we focus on performance by actual post reach, SocialInsider’s data indicates that marketers should expect an average engagement rate of below 2 percent.

Facebook ads still reaching up

But despite these trends, the Facebook ad reach figure published in Meta’s planning tools at the start of 2025 was the second highest we’ve ever seen (the highest was in October 2023).

And Meta’s platforms are clearly still top choices with advertisers too, with the company reporting record “family average revenue per person” in its 2024 Q4 earnings announcement at the end of January 2025.

So, while Zuck and team will want to improve those user and activity numbers in the months ahead, marketers should still consider Facebook to be one of the top opportunities in 2025.

Instagram outpaces TikTok

And there’s better news for Zuck and team in the latest Instagram data, too.

Perhaps most importantly, after the drama that we saw in last quarter’s numbers, Instagram has recaptured third place from TikTok in the global social media ad reach rankings.

Indeed, Instagram’s reported reach has grown by more than 5 percent over the past year, which is well ahead of the net 2 percent annual growth that we’ve seen in TikTok’s reported ad audience numbers during the same period.

Relatively speaking, Instagram has enjoyed particularly strong growth across Central Asia over the past year, with Uzbekistan seeing reported Instagram reach jump by a third, which equates to an additional 3 million users.

However, Instagram continues to see strong performance in its largest markets too.

And in fact, despite its top 5 markets already accounting for more than half of the platform’s total audience, Instagram still registered meaningful growth across India, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey during the past three months.

However, marketers will want to keep their eye on Instagram engagement in 2025, with both Locowise and SocialInsider recording significant declines in Business account engagement rates over the past 12 months.

Both companies point to current Instagram engagement rates being less than half the values that we saw this time last year, which may have important implications for marketing performance.

And for context, these datasets indicate that Instagram engagement is falling even faster than Facebook engagement.

So, while engagement isn’t necessarily the most insightful metric for measuring the performance of social media marketing activities, marketers should still take extra time over the coming months to review whether their Instagram campaigns are delivering against objectives.

Having said that, Instagram remains a top choice for marketers in 2025, so these reviews should focus on improving is efficiency and effectiveness.

TikTok trends for 2025

But as we alluded to above, it’s been an interesting few months for TikTok.

Following a partial implementation of a government ban in the USA, the platform narrowly escaped going “totally dark” in the country in January 2025, and – at the time of writing – existing users in America can still use the platform if they already have it installed on their phones.

However, both Apple and Google have removed TikTok from their app stores in the United States, meaning that Americans are not currently able to download the app onto new devices, nor are they able to replace it on their current device if they’ve deleted it.

TikTok ad reach declines

But even before that US TikTok ban went into effect, the platform had already made some significant changes to its reported ad reach figures.

Indeed, the global potential reach figure delivered by Bytedance’s ad planning tools points to a drop of almost 100 million accounts between October 2024 and January 2025, resulting in a quarter-on-quarter decline of 5.7 percent.

The company’s own figures still allude to 2 percent year-on-year growth in global ad reach, but these recent corrections mean that TikTok’s ad reach now equates to less than 20 percent of the global population.

Our analysis of the data indicates that the biggest drops have affected countries across South-East Asia, with Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia all seeing a drop of more than 30 percent, and Vietnam’s reported total falling by more than 40 percent

In total, since October, the platform has lost almost 115 million accounts from its reported ad reach total in these four countries alone.

Additionally, the platform also saw meaningful drops in Brazil – where it lost nearly 20 million accounts – as well as in France and Australia.

However, the platform recorded some impressive gains in certain countries over the past three months, which helped to partially offset the overall impact of these losses.

Indeed, the platform still registered gains across five of its top 10 markets, with Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Egypt all seeing encouraging growth.

And just for reference, note that this table reflects values reported shortly before the American ban went into effect, so the 1.5 percent decline we see in the USA was not caused by changes in the platform’s availability in that country.

Making sense of TikTok trends

However, despite those drops in reported ad reach, our analysis of data from a number of reliable third parties – including GWI, data.ai, Similarweb, and Semrush – shows no sign of any drop in actual TikTok use.

Indeed, all the data we’ve seen suggests that active TikTok user numbers continue to increase at healthy rates.

As a result, we’re confident that the declines apparent in TikTok’s ad reach numbers are the result of corrections in reported figures – potentially due to the removal of duplicate and inauthentic accounts – and these trends do not imply any negative change in real, “human” users.

However, marketers will still want to keep an eye on these changes, because real ad budgets can quickly be consumed by the activity of inauthentic accounts and bots.

Moreover, third-party data points to a global TikTok user total that may be meaningfully lower than the figure suggested by ByteDance’s ad reach numbers.

Conversely, the active user figures that these third-party tools report for other large social platforms tends to be a much closer match to what we see in those platforms’ respective ad reach numbers.

TikTok clocks time wins

But user figures aside, different numbers in data.ai’s intelligence suite point to yet more success for TikTok over recent months.

For example, the average monthly time that the typical TikTok user spends using the platform’s Android app increased by almost two hours between August and November, resulting in a quarter-on-quarter increase of almost 6 percent.

At a worldwide level, TikTok’s Android user base spent almost 35 hours using the platform’s app in November 2024, which equates to more than two whole waking days that month.

And for comparison, TikTok users spend almost 8 hours per month longer using TikTok’s Android app than YouTube users spend using the YouTube Android app in November 2024.

Moreover, TikTok users now spend more than twice as much time using TikTok as Instagram users spend using Instagram.

Interestingly, data.ai’s intelligence suggests that average TikTok session time actually declined slightly between August and November, but the average number of sessions per month increased by roughly 10 percent.

The latest figures show that the typical user opened TikTok’s Android app an average of 360 times in November 2024, which equates to an average of 12 sessions per day.

Meanwhile, the same dataset suggests that the typical TikTok session now lasts 5 minutes and 49 seconds.

And if we take a moment to digest the implications of this data, it seems as though the average TikTok user opens the app at least once every 90 minutes, and then spends close to 6 minutes using it.

In other words, on the basis that the typical person spends between 7 and 8 hours each day sleeping, it seems as though the average TikTok user spends roughly 7 percent of their waking life watching TikToks.

But remember, that’s the global average.

More strikingly, data.ai’s intelligence suggests that the average Indonesian TikTok user spent almost 45 hours using the app in November 2024.

And despite recent corrections in reported ad reach figures, Indonesia remains TikTok’s second largest market.

And these figures suggest that – across the archipelago – more than 100 million Indonesian users spent an average of roughly 9 percent of their waking lives just using TikTok in November 2024.

Tik, tik, boom

But to offer an ever more vivid sense of the scale involved when it comes to TikTok, it’s worth considering that the 6.6 billion TikToks tagged with “#FYP” attracted an incremental 24 trillion views in 2024 alone.

And yes, that really is trillions.

That means that – on average – TikToks tagged with “#FYP” enjoyed more than 760,000 views every single second during 2024.

And whichever way you look at them, those figures are just staggering.

YouTube still the clear winner

And yet – despite these eye-watering TikTok stats – YouTube still accounts for the greatest overall share of time spent using social platforms, thanks to its significantly larger user base.

Sure enough, recent trends have propelled TikTok into second place in the rankings by total time, and as we’ve seen, the platform delivers some seriously impressive numbers.

However, YouTube is so dominant that it still accounts for a greater share of time than TikTok and Instagram… combined.

Mind. Blown. 🤯

The outlook for TikTok in 2025

But what about the future?

Well, despite the app’s temporary US reprieve, TikTok’s outlook in America remains uncertain at the time of writing.

For perspective, the US is still TikTok’s largest market, and with close to 136 million active adult accounts, the United States accounts for roughly 8½ percent of TikTok’s global ad audience.

And furthermore, based on the average revenue per user (ARPU) figures that we see for other platforms, we can assume that America accounts for a significant proportion of TikTok’s revenues.

As a result, ByteDance would certainly feel the hit of a TikTok ban in the States.

Moreover, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the platform’s users would feel that loss keenly too.

For example, data.ai intelligence suggests that US users spend an average of almost 44 hours per month using the TikTok app, opening it an average of roughly 9 times each day.

But even if TikTok were to lose its American user base, it’s likely that the platform would still be one of six largest platforms in the world by active users.

However, the more important questions are whether an outright ban in the United States would result in similar legislation in other countries, and whether users outside of the US would follow their favourite American creators to other platforms.

Reddit’s ad reach doubles

But TikTok isn’t the only platform reporting big changes in ad reach over recent months.

Indeed, the ad reach figures reported in Reddit’s ad tools have seen a dramatic jump over the past three months.

Comparing data published in January 2025 with data published in October 2024, the potential reach of Reddit ads appears to have increased by a massive 129 percent in the final quarter of 2024.

That means Reddit’s reported global total has more than doubled since October, with an increase of 342 million taking the global total to 606 million.

These figures suggest that Reddit ads now reach close to 11 percent of the world’s internet users, and more than 1 in 14 people on Earth.

Reddit growth in perspective

However, our careful analysis of third-party data from companies including GWI, data.ai, Similarweb, and Semrush shows that – while Reddit use has indeed been increasing – it’s very unlikely that active Reddit users have doubled over the past three months.

So, our “read” of these numbers is that Reddit has either changed the ways in which it serves ads in order to reach a significantly larger proportion of its user base, or it has changed the methodology it uses to quantify and / or report ad reach in its tools.

Either way though, these new reach figures will likely be of interest to marketers.

Indeed, Reddit’s reported global reach figure of 606 million is now greater than the figure reported by X (585.8 million), and it’s also catching up with the 708.7 million reported by Snapchat.

And it’s also worth highlighting that Reddit has long been a top performer in our global website rankings.

Indeed, both Semrush and Similarweb rank Reddit.com in their top 10 domains by total traffic, and Similarweb’s unique visitor numbers offer some corroboration for the platform’s own potential ad reach figures.

It’s also telling that Reddit was one of the top 20 search terms entered into Google during 2024, with the platform even ranking ahead of Apple.

Moreover, Google appears to have identified Reddit as a popular source of “authority” when it comes to search queries, with Alphabet’s search engine increasingly suggesting “Reddit” as an additional term in its “people also search for…” feature.

r/YouSure?

However, Reddit’s reported ad reach appears to be heavily concentrated in a handful of markets, and some of the figures are starting to look a bit odd.

For example, while data from GWI confirms that Reddit is indeed popular in Canada, it’s unlikely that ads on the platform reach 106 percent of the country’s total population aged 13 and above, as implied in the figures reported in Reddit’s own tools.

Similarly, Reddit’s own reach figures for the United States, Singapore, and Australia may raise a few eyebrows.

One plausible explanation for these high figures could be a meaningful number of duplicate accounts, where the same individual manages multiple “profiles” on the platform.

As a result, marketers may want to prioritise interest targeting on Reddit, especially because activity on the platform naturally falls into clearly defined “communities”.

LinkedIn continues to grow

Meanwhile, figures reported in LinkedIn’s ad planning tools indicate that the platform’s global ad reach has increased by a hefty 17 percent over the past year.

It’s important to stress that LinkedIn reports potential ad reach based on total registered members rather than monthly active users, with the latter being the more common basis for ad reach metrics across other social platforms.

And in fact, our analysis of data from a variety of reputable third parties suggests that LinkedIn reaches around 350 million active users each month, which is significantly lower than the 1.2 billion figure reported in LinkedIn’s ad tools.

However, LinkedIn’s “audience network” extends across a wealth of third-party publishers on the web, and these placements take LinkedIn ads well beyond the confines of its own platform.

So, while LinkedIn’s audience figures may not be directly comparable with those of other social platforms, they’re still testament to the huge potential of LinkedIn ads.

However, just two countries – the United States and India – account for a third of LinkedIn’s reported total.

And while there’s still plenty of potential for continued growth in India, there appears to be limited scope for LinkedIn to continue growing in the United States, with the current US reach figure already equivalent to more than 91 percent of all American adults [note that LinkedIn’s terms of service limit use to people over the age of 16, but the platform’s ad tools only report data for users aged 18 and above].

LinkedIn is also approaching saturation in some of the world’s other top economies, with reach figures already equivalent to more than 80 percent of all adults in the UK.

Pinterest up by double digits

And it’s also been a good year for Pinterest, with the platform’s reported ad reach growing by more than 10 percent in 2024.

Pinterest ads now reach 32 million more users than they did this time last year, taking the reach of Pinterest ads beyond 5 percent of all adults aged 18 and above.

Meanwhile, the monthly active user (MAU) figures reported in the company’s investor earnings announcements point to even stronger growth for the platform as a whole, with the 537 million MAU number that the company reported in October 2024 more than 11 percent higher than the figure it reported for the same period a year earlier.

It’s also worth highlighting Pinterest’s strong female audience skew, which makes it particularly interesting for marketers hoping to engage young women.

Indeed, the company’s own data suggest that women aged 18 to 24 account for 1 in 5 members of the platform’s ad audience, making the platform particularly appealing to marketers hoping to reach this demographic.

And marketers may also be interested to explore our new dataset exploring the most followed accounts on Pinterest, which offer valuable insights into the kinds of content that users seek out on the platform.

Online shopping still popping

Next up, let’s take a look at ecommerce.

Figures from Statista point to compelling growth in online shopping revenues in 2024, with the company’s estimates for full-year spend on consumer goods clocking in at more than US$4.12 trillion.

Moreover, global online consumer goods revenues increased by more than half a trillion dollars in 2024 compared with 2023 spend, equating to year-on-year-on-year growth of 14.6 percent.

Statista’s analysis puts the number of people making online purchases of consumer goods at more than 2.5 billion, with that figure increasing by 200 million (+8.5 percent) over the past 12 months.

For comparison, GWI reports that close to 56 percent of online adults make online purchases every week, which points to an online shopping universe of roughly 1.7 billion in any given seven-day period.

And of those online shoppers, roughly half say that they buy groceries online each week, meaning that these products are amongst the most frequent of online purchases.

Top ecommerce categories

Statista’s data suggests that this frequency has tangible value too, with Food ranking second amongst the categories of online consumer goods purchases.

Indeed, with full-year online spend of US$680 million in 2024, the Food category was second only to Fashion, which delivered more than US$770 million in online revenue during the course of last year.

DIY & Hardware ranked third, with close to half a trillion US dollars in online spend, while electronics ranked fourth, with US$465.

And despite the continued growth of streaming platforms, physical media also saw strong sales in 2024, with Statista reporting an annual total of US$439 in online purchases of books, board games, vinyl, DVDs, and other similar products.

But despite these impressive figures, Statista’s analysis suggests that – worldwide – online channels account for just $1 in every $6 spent on consumer goods purchases.

The company’s data show that ecommerce claimed 17.3 percent of consumer goods revenues in 2024, which was slightly lower than the figure we saw during the 2021, when Covid-19 lockdowns redefined shopping behaviours.

However, on a relative basis, the latest revenue share figure is almost 50 percent above the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, when online channels only accounted for 12 percent of global consumer goods revenues.

Top ecommerce markets

At a country level, online channels are strongest in the United States, with Statista’s data indicating that ecommerce accounted for more than one-third of total consumer goods spending in 2024.

China isn’t far behind though, with 31.2 percent of category spend in the country attributable to online channels.

Ecommerce is still struggling to gain large-scale momentum in various parts of the world though, with ecommerce’s share of consumer goods retail spend still in single digits across most developing economies.

The world’s strongest ecommerce merchants

At a merchant level, intelligence from data.ai indicates that Amazon is the most popular online retailer in the world, with the company’s app topping the ranking of mobile apps in the shopping category.

Shopee ranks second at worldwide level thanks to a particularly strong showing in South-East Asia and Brazil, while India’s Flipkart ranks third.

However, it’s particularly interesting to see Temu take fourth place from Shein in these latest rankings.

Indeed, data.ai’s figures suggest that Temu delivered double-digit active user growth between September and November 2024, whereas Shein actually saw a small drop in active user figures during the same period.

Most searched products

Google’s Shopping search service isn’t restricted to online purchases, but – given its online nature – it’s safe to assume that queries are highly representative of online shopping intent too, so this dataset is well worth exploring.

At a worldwide level, Google Trends data indicates that the iPhone was the most searched product in 2024, with the volume of searches for this brand query roughly 12 percent ahead of the second ranked query, Samsung.

Nike ranked third, two places ahead of arch rival Adidas, while Amazon split the two sports brands by taking fourth place.

However, it’s interesting to note that iPhone ranked ahead of its “master” brand, Apple, with Google Trends data indicating that searches for the company’s smartphones occur three times more frequently than searches for the company brand.

And moreover, three distinct iPhone models also make the top 20 searches for 2024, with iPhone 15 in 9th place, iPhone 13 in 12th place, and iPhone 14 in 18th place.

Overall, Apple and its products account for six of the top 20, with iPad also making the list for 2024.

Meanwhile, Amazon, Lego and Walmart are the only search terms outside of the consumer electronics and sports categories to make the top 20.

Senior surfers

Next up, let’s turn our attention to one of the largest untapped audiences on the internet.

Consistent data detailing the demography of the world’s internet users can be tricky to come by, but based on the data reviewed by the Kepios team, it appears that:

People aged 50 and above account for more than 30 percent of the world’s adult internet users.
People aged 60 and above account for more than 15 percent of the world’s adult internet users.
People aged 65 and above account for more than 10 percent of the world’s adult internet users.

But despite accounting for a sizeable share of the world’s online population, the marketing industry at best struggles to understand these older audiences, and at worst, it completely ignores them.

This is most clearly demonstrated in GWI’s research into how likely people are to feel represented in the advertising that they see and hear, which shows that just 1 in 25 people aged 65 and above – a meagre 4 percent – feels any such affinity.

And men in this age group are even more likely to feel alienated by marketing content, with just 3.6 percent of male respondents over the age of 65 saying that they feel represented in the advertising that they see and hear.

Meanwhile, older generations also feel that many businesses fail to recognise the needs of their age group.

For example, a study in the UK found that just 1 in 3 people over the age of 50 (34 percent) felt that retailers of home products cared about people of their age.

Silver generation, golden opportunity

But consumer spend data shows that marketers would be crazy to ignore these “senior” audiences.

For example, consumers aged 50 and above account for more than half (53 percent) of total consumer spending in the USA, and more than 40 percent of America’s consumer ecommerce spend.

Similarly, people in this age group account for 54 percent of total consumer spend in the United Kingdom.

And figures for the European Union are equally compelling, with data from Eurostat suggesting that people over the age of 50 also account for half of total consumer spending.

Meanwhile, GWI’s research shows that older generations are just as likely to buy online as younger people.

And in fact, while the geographic coverage of GWI’s survey for audiences aged 65 and above isn’t quite as extensive as the rest of its survey, the available data suggest that retirees are actually more likely than people aged 16 to 24 to make online purchases each week.

Older generations are also more likely to use online financial services.

This may be partly because older generations tend to be financially better off than people in their teens and early 20s, but it may also be because older people are more interested in actively managing their finances via digital channels.

Either way though, it’s clear that older generations are just as comfortable transacting online as younger people are.

So where are marketers missing out most when it comes to older generations?

Here are some of the things that stand out for us in the latest data.

In each case, note that the geographic audience of over-65s in GWI’s research is not the same as its coverage for all other age groups, but the findings remain compelling nonetheless.

Streaming platforms

Older generations spend the greatest amount of time watching television, but streaming platforms like Netflix only account for a small fraction of their total TV time.

More specifically, internet users aged 65 and above spend more than 4¼ hours watching TV each day, but streaming accounts for barely 40 minutes (15.6 percent) of that daily viewing time.

Older people are also less likely to say that they watch streaming platforms in general, with fewer than than 7 in 10 respondents in this age group (69.8 percent) answering in the affirmative, compared with an overall average of 91.9 percent.

Women aged 65 and above are even less likely to use OTT services, with just 67.7 percent saying that they watched streaming content within the past 30 days.

However – crucially – older generations don’t appear to be significantly less averse to paying for streaming platforms.

GWI’s data shows that 26 percent of internet users aged 65 and above pay for TV and movie streaming platforms each month, compared with an overall average of 31.5 percent across all age groups.

In other words, there appears to be a meaningful opportunity for streaming platforms to do more to engage older generations.

Digitally enabled mobility

It’s also surprising to see that so few people over the age of 65 have embraced online mobility services like ride-hailing apps.

It’s worth noting that this category includes bike and scooter hire apps, which admittedly may be less appealing to over-65s than they are to younger generations.

However, given that this category also includes apps that facilitate taxi and ride-sharing bookings, it seems as though services like Uber, Lyft, and Grab may be missing a valuable trick when it comes to older generations.

Indeed, GWI’s latest research shows that barely 1 in 14 internet users aged 65 and above (7.2 percent) used an online mobility service of any kind in the past 30 days, as compared with an overall overage of 34.4 percent across all age groups.

Video games

But perhaps the most surprising opportunity relates to video games.

Many marketers still cling to a stereotype of “gamers” as spotty teenage boys hiding out in their parents’ basement, but data tells a very different story.

Admittedly, teenagers remain the most avid gamers, with GWI’s data showing that a hefty 92.6 percent of internet users aged 16 to 24 play video games.

However, more than 7 in 10 internet users aged 55 to 64 (70.3 percent) say that they play video games, and well over half of online audiences over the age of 65 (55.8 percent) also say the same.

Gaming habits do vary by generation though, so it’s well worth doing some detailed research before jumping headlong into a gaming strategy.

For example, older gamers are less likely to use a console like a PlayStation or an Xbox for their gaming fix, instead relying on smartphones, PCs, and tablets for their video game activities.

Meanwhile, the types of video games that appeal to older generations can be quite different to those enjoyed by the stereotypical “gamer”.

For example, while GWI’s latest wave of research shows that “shooter” titles dominate the genre rankings for gamers under the age of 44, older generations are more likely to seek out puzzles, online board games, and action adventure titles.

Podcasts

For our penultimate trend this quarter, let’s turn our attention to digital audio.

Podcasts received renewed interest after the US presidential election at the end of 2024, when Donald Trump acknowledged the power of podcast hosts like Joe Rogan in his election victory speech.

But more broadly, data from GWI indicates that podcasts have been gaining popularity over the past two years, and more than 1 in 5 online adults (22.1 percent) now listen to at least one podcast each week.

That figure may seem relatively low, but it’s interesting to note that it’s actually higher than the incidence of people following influencers and other experts on social channels (22.0 percent).

Put more simply, it seems that podcasts are now more popular than influencers.

GWI’s data shows that podcasts are relatively more popular in the United States, with 27.7 percent of online adults saying that they listened to a podcast in the past seven days.

However, Indonesians are the world’s most avid podcast fans, with 42.6 percent of the country’s adult internet users saying that they’ve listened to a podcast within the past week.

And the audio format is also highly popular in Mexico, where 41.8 percent of connected adults tune into a podcast at least once a week.

Podcasts are significantly less popular across Asia though, reaching fewer than 1 in 20 connected adults in Japan (4.9 percent), and barely 1 in 8 in China (12.8 percent).

However, while the media has observed that Trump enjoyed particular success in using podcasts to reach younger, “disaffected” men, GWI’s data suggests that women actually make up the majority of podcast listeners.

At a worldwide level, female internet users aged 25 to 34 account for the largest single share of podcast listeners, with women aged 16 to 24 coming a close second.

Podcast time

Meanwhile, the average amount of time spent listening to podcasts has gone through something of a U-shaped curve over the past 18 months

GWI reports that the typical internet user now spends roughly 52 minutes per day listening to podcasts, which is 3 minutes per day less than the value GWI reported in Q1 2023, but 4 minutes more than the value for Q4 2023.

And while women aged 25 to 34 represent the largest single audience of podcasts, it’s actually men in this age group who spend the greatest amount of time listening to this audio format.

Indeed, men aged 25 to 34 say that they spend an average of 1 hour and 7 minutes listening to podcasts each day, compared with 1 hour and 3 minutes per day for their female peers.

The time spent listening to podcasts tends to decline with age though, and the typical internet user over the age of 65 listens to less than 15 minutes per day.

It’s also interesting to note that – despite his divisive appeal – Joe Rogan remains the top podcaster on Spotify, and his show also ranks highly on Apple’s podcast platform.

However, the number of non-English language podcasts that made Spotify’s top 20 for 2024 is equally worthy of note, proving that the format has gained broad appeal all around the world.

Online privacy

And lastly for this year’s flagship analysis, let’s turn our attention to data privacy.

And in something of a surprise, the number of connected adults expressing concern about their online privacy continues to decline.

Indeed, fewer than 3 in 10 internet users aged 16+ say that they’re worried about how companies use their personal data online today, with that figure down a relative 7.1 percent compared with the figure we reported this time two years ago.

Interestingly, worries about online privacy seem to increase with age, with retirees significantly more likely to express concern about online data security than people in younger age groups.

However, people aged 16 to 24 are actually more likely to worry than people aged 25 to 44 are, so we may see these demographic differences evolve over the coming years.

At a country level, internet users in Spain and Portugal are the most likely to worry about how companies use their personal data online, with more than half of connected adults in both countries expressing concern.

But at the other end of the spectrum, internet users in Africa appear to be significantly less concerned, with fewer than 1 in 10 online adults in Morocco saying that they worry about how companies might use their online data.

Cookies please

Meanwhile, we’ve also seen a downward trend in the number of internet users who say that they reject cookies on websites.

Barely 1 in 3 online adults (34.5 percent) now say that they reject cookies at least some of the time, which suggests that nearly two-thirds of us always click “accept all”, and move on with our lives.

People in Western and Southern Europe are the most likely to reject cookies – most likely due to the pervasive “cookie banners” required by EU law – but even then, fewer than half of online adults across the EU, Switzerland and the UK say that decline cookies, even on an occasional basis.

Meanwhile, people across Asia, Africa, and South America seem meaningfully less concerned, with the vast majority of internet users saying that they don’t reject website cookies.

Wrapping up

That’s (almost) all for this year’s flagship analysis – thanks for sticking with me all the way through this bumper writeup!

If you’re still looking for more data (!), I’d recommend starting with our Digital 2025 Country Headlines Report, which has essential figures for mobile, internet, and social media adoption in almost every country on Earth.

And if you’re looking for even richer insights into local-level trends and behaviours, you might like to know that our more detailed Digital 2025 local country reports will be available in DataReportal’s free online library starting in late February 2025.

But just before you go…

A tail as old as time

To conclude this year’s deep-dive, let’s explore what might be our most impawtant Global Digital dataset: who’s “winning the web” in 2025.

And you may want to hold on to your hat at this point, because the fur has really been flying this year…

After being top dogs on the internet for the past few years, it’s been something of a rough year for canines, and Google’s crawlers report that there are now more than a billion more web pages about cats than there are pages about dogs.

At first we thought they were just kitten, but – while perhaps not purrfect – it seems the stats are indeed fur real: Google search currently returns 6.48 billion results for “cat”, compared with just 5.44 billion results for “dog”.

Cats have been hounding pups over on Wikipedia too, with the authoritative site’s English-language page about felines attracting 5.18 million worldwide views in 2024, compared with just 2.86 million for the canine equivalent.

But while those numbers will certainly be mewsic to feline ears, 2024 wasn’t a total cat-astrophe for their sworn enemies.

Social animals

Indeed, it seems that humans are still far more interested in dogs, as evidenced by search index data from Google Trends.

The world’s favourite search engine reports that global interest in dogs averaged 89 out of a pawsible 100 for 2024 as a whole, whereas interest in cats only averaged 55.

As a result, there’s a purrsuasive argument to be made that the current supremacy of cat pages on the web may all be down to copycat content churned out by GenAI.

And while some might dismiss such claims as tall tails, they may actually be borne out by the latest social media data.

For example, the world’s Instagram users have published 390 million posts tagged with #dog, compared with just 303 million posts tagged with #cat.

Canines also come out ahead of kitties on TikTok, with the platform’s users viewing posts tagged with #dog 787 billion times to date, compared with 754 billion views for posts tagged with #cat.

The gap is far clearer over at X though, where cats seem to have fallen totally out of favour.

Perhaps they largely deserted Twitter after the demise of Larry the Bird?

Either way, the platform’s advertising tools suggest that X users are now five times more likely to be interested in dogs than they are to be interested in cats.

Meowch.

And the winner is…

However, on the balance of all this data, I’m going to call the internet for cats in 2024 – even if only by a whisker.

But does this result pawtend the end of dog days for the internet?

Well, maybe not… based on historical trends, I have a feline that dogs will make a comeback in 2025.

Only time will tell though, and – ultimuttly – we’ll need to wait and see.

The good news is that we have bi-pawtisan support to continue researching this dataset though, so we’ll keep digging.

On that note, I’ll paws my analysis there, but I’ll be back on your screens before you know it, with the first of our Digital 2025 Statshot reports scheduled for late April.

Until then – as always – #BeMoreDog.

Disclosure: Simon Kemp is a brand ambassador for GWI.

About the author

Simon Kemp

Simon is DataReportal’s chief analyst, and CEO of Kepios.
Click here to see all of Simon’s articles, read his bio, and connect with him on social media.

Digital 2025: Global Overview Report