We’re barely four months into the year, but all the signs indicate that 2026 will not be “business as usual” when it comes to digital trends.

The latest report in our ongoing Global Digital Reports series reveals that AI adoption is already considerably more widespread than headlines suggest, and millions of new users continue to discover AI every single day.

And AI use isn’t our only big headline this quarter, so prepare yourself for a bumper selection of data, trends, and surprises.

Your complete guide to digital in mid-2026

The Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update Report – published in partnership between We Are Social and Manochi – has everything you need to know about:

Global internet access and usage trends
AI adoption and use around the world
Social media behaviours and platform preferences
Mobile ownership and use
Ecommerce activity
Online entertainment
Digital marketing trends, including ad spend and engagement

Essential headlines

Introducing Manochi

Keen-eyed readers may notice that we have a new sponsor for this quarter’s report.

Manochi is a new strategic insights consultancy founded by Simon Kemp and Chase Buckle.

Simon has been leading production of the Global Digital Reports since the series launched in 2011, and Chase was formerly global VP of Trends at GWI, where he spent a decade analysing consumer and digital behaviours.

For reassurance, the same team continues to research and analyse the Global Digital Reports, and none of our underlying methodologies have changed. However, Manochi now manages production of the Global Digital Reports series, so you’ll see the brand cited throughout our reports and articles.

If you’d like to know more, you can find us at manochi.co, and on our LinkedIn page.

The ultimate collection of digital data

Before we begin, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our wonderful research partners, who provide the world-leading data you’ll find in this report:

Authenticity statement

All of this analysis has been written by Simon Kemp at Manochi, without the use of generative AI [why does this matter?].

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

If you’d like to follow 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:

The United Nations has made significant changes to its approach to classifying “urbanisation” since our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report in October 2025, resulting in some big changes in our reported values for urbanisation and urban population.
We’ve changed the tools we use to collect X’s ad reach data, but our tests indicate that this change has not had any impact on the values that we report.

Please also refer to our comprehensive notes on data to understand other changes to data and sources in the Global Digital Reports series.

The complete report

You’ll find our complete Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update Report in the embed below (click here if that isn’t visible, or isn’t working properly), but read on past that to find our in-depth analysis of what these numbers actually mean for you and your work.

The global state of digital in April 2026

Let’s start with a look at the latest global headlines:

The United Nations’ World Populations Prospects data shows that there are 8.28 billion people living on Earth today. That figure is 69 million higher than the total we reported in April 2025, resulting in an annual growth rate of 0.8 percent. The UN’s data also highlights advancing urbanisation, with 80.5 percent of the world’s population – more than 4 in 5 people – now living in towns and cities [note that the UN made fundamental changes to the way it classifies urban and rural populations in November 2025].
GSMA Intelligence’s latest research indicates that there are 5.83 billion unique mobile users around the world in April 2026, which equates to 70.4 percent of the global population. This unique subscriber figure has increased by 103 million over the past 12 months, revealing annual growth of 1.8 percent. For additional perspective, data from Ericsson shows that smartphones now account for roughly 89.1 percent of the mobile phone handsets in use, and 85.5 percent of total cellular mobile connections.
Manochi’s analysis shows that the total number of people using the internet had reached 6.12 billion at the start of April 2026, resulting in a global internet penetration figure of 73.8 percent. Reported internet user figures have increased by 59 million (+1.0 percent) over the past year, but our analysis indicates that delays in reporting mean the actual growth figure over the past 12 months is probably considerably higher than these numbers suggest. However, despite continued improvements in internet accessibility, close to 2.2 billion people around the world remained offline at the time of report production.
Manochi’s research indicates that global social media user identities have now reached 5.79 billion, with that figure equivalent to 69.9 percent of the global population. Our total user identities figure increased by 5.4 percent in the 12 months to April 2026, thanks to the addition of 294 million new identities [note that “user identities” may not represent unique human individuals.]
In the newest addition to our Global Digital Reports, Manochi’s analysis reveals that there are now 2.42 billion active users of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. This figure equates to 29.2 percent of the total population, but – like our social media user identities figure – it’s important to stress that this GenAI user figure may not represent unique, human individuals. Caveats aside though, data indicates that active GenAI users have more than doubled over the past 12 months. The global user figure increased by more than 1.4 billion between April 2025 and April 2026, resulting in an impressive annual growth rate of 141 percent.

But beyond overall adoption trends, how have people’s online behaviours and preferences been evolving?

Let’s explore the latest developments.

Initial context: digital access and connectivity

With 6.12 billion people using the internet in April 2026, nearly three-quarters of the world’s population is now online, and trends indicate that we’re on track to pass that major milestone by the end of this year.

Moreover, Manochi’s analysis suggests that more than 4 in 5 of the world’s adults over the age of 16 – 80.5 percent – already use the internet.

It’s important to highlight that more than 2 billion people remain offline at the time of writing, but encouragingly, current growth rates suggest that we should see that figure fall below 2 billion within the next 12 to 18 months.

However, while internet access rates are improving, access in itself doesn’t necessarily deliver the full range of benefits associated with digital connectivity.

As Thierry Geiger, Chief of the ITU’s ICT Data and Analytics Division, explained to DataReportal in a recent email:

“Mobile phone ownership remains the primary gateway to Internet use, and in many lower-income countries the gap between owning a phone and going online is narrowing rapidly.
But getting online is only a first step: closing the digital skills gap remains a major challenge globally as even wealthier countries with similar levels of use show wide differences in the share of individuals with basic digital competencies.”

Echoing those concerns, GSMA Intelligence’s State Of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025 report reveals that primary barriers to further internet adoption and use include:

The affordability of mobile data and mobile handsets;
Overall levels of literacy (being able to read and write);
Digital skills, including knowing how to use a mobile phone or the internet;
Safety and security concerns, including fear of scams, concerns about harmful content, and restrictive, gender-related social norms;
The overall connectivity experience, with limited handset functionality and network performance of particular importance.

GSMA Intelligence’s research has also found that:

“Many underserved populations, such as women and persons with disabilities, tend to experience these barriers more acutely, due to structural inequalities such as disparities in access to education and income as well as restrictive social norms”.

So, while the data we’ll explore below presents cause for optimism, there’s still plenty of work to do before improved internet connectivity can deliver its full potential.

But once people overcome the initial barriers, what do they actually do when they go online?

Top online activities in April 2026

The latest research offers interesting insights into the reasons why people use the internet.

In particular, the evolving technological landscape already appears to be reshaping people’s online behaviours, especially when it comes to the services they use to satisfy their needs and interests.

Reasons for going online

Across 54 of the world’s largest economies, GWI reports that “finding information” remains the primary reason for using the internet today, with more than 6 in 10 online adults (60.1 percent) citing this activity as a top motivation.

“Staying in touch with friends and family” ranks second, with 57.7 percent of GWI’s respondents selecting this answer option, while “watching videos, TV shows and movies” ranks third, with 53.4 percent.

The typical internet user cites more than 7.5 reasons for going online, and – while this average has been trending down over recent months – the range of people’s motivations remains a critical consideration when we’re exploring online behaviour.

In particular, the associated diversity suggests that internet connectivity is now woven into the fabric of most daily activities.

And as such, the “internet” is now more akin to electricity than it is to media like television or radio.

Top online destinations

Data for the types of websites and apps that people use on a regular basis adds a meaningful perspective on the motivations data that we explored above.

Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn remain the primary online destinations in April 2026, with 93.8 percent of GWI’s respondents saying they’ve visited at least one social network within the past month.

Almost the same share of online adults – 93.6 percent – say that they use chat apps and messenger platforms like WhatsApp and WeChat each month, and a hefty 96.7 percent of GWI’s survey respondents say that they use at least one social network or messenger service each month.

Search engines and web portals like Google and Yahoo rank third amongst the options available in GWI’s latest survey, with just under 4 in 5 respondents – 79.3 percent – selecting this category from GWI’s pre-defined list of answer options.

Email places fourth, at 74.4 percent, while shopping, auctions, and classifieds rank fifth, with 74.2 percent.

It’s critical to highlight that this particular question in GWI’s survey doesn’t (yet) include an answer option relating to the use of AI, but don’t worry – we’ll come on to explore AI use in a moment.

Beware of the bull

Just before we explore that AI data, it’s important to highlight that the kinds of platforms and services that people use vary meaningfully by age.

Younger people are more likely to cite social networks as their top online destination, with this answer option topping the rankings for internet users aged 16 to 44.

And that finding has particular significance when we consider that the media continues to propagate misinformation proclaiming the “death of social media”, or that young people have “abandoned” social platforms.

For clarity, neither of these claims has any factual basis in reliable, representative data.

And on that note, I’d encourage you to be extremely wary of any reports about online behaviours that you encounter in mass media, because our analysis indicates that mainstream media headlines increasingly tend towards exaggeration, hyperbole, and even deliberate misrepresentation.

As a result, while we acknowledge the commercial impetus for such distortions, media headlines have become an exceptionally poor source of intelligence when it comes to informing marketing plans and strategies.

Returning to reliable data, GWI’s latest research shows that chat and messaging apps are the preferred choice amongst older, working-age adults, with these platforms topping the rankings for internet users aged 45 to 64.

Retirees are more likely to prefer search engines and portals though, and amongst this age group, email still outranks social networks and messengers.

It’s important to remember that the relevance of these channels to your work depends as much on what you want to share with people as who you want to reach, and your desired outcomes and objectives should always be the primary influence when it comes to shaping your media and channel mix.

However, this data highlights that different demographics have different preferences and behaviours when it comes to their online activities, and those differences are an important consideration when it comes to improving both the efficiency and the effectiveness of marketing and communications plans.

4 billion adults already use AI

But now for the data you’ve been waiting for: figures for the adoption and use of AI.

Before we get into the numbers, it’s critical to remember that AI remains just one part of the “portfolio” of platforms and services that people use, and we always need to consider the use of individual technologies in the broader context of people’s overall digital activities.

Moreover, as we’ll see in the data below, our analysis indicates that AI is simply a means to an end.

In other words, while data for the adoption and use of AI platforms and tools is important, data exploring the reasons why people use these tools is far more valuable.

But having said that, figures for AI adoption provide critical context, so let’s start with some quantitative benchmarks.

Quantifying global AI use

The latest research from GWI reveals that more than 4 in 5 online adults now use AI.

More specifically, the company’s Q4 2025 wave of research found that 81.2 percent of survey respondents around the world used at least one form of AI within the past month.

This startling finding comes from a survey of more than 240,000 people aged 16 and above across 54 of the world’s largest economies, with those countries and territories home to more than 80 percent of the world’s total internet user base.

And furthermore, GWI’s data indicates that people in less-developed economies actually tend to over-index for AI use, suggesting that internet users in countries not covered by GWI’s survey may be even more likely to use AI tools compared with the global average.

But even if we use GWI’s global figure as the baseline for AI use across all of the world’s online adults, the figures point to a significant AI user base.

As a baseline, Manochi’s analysis indicates that people aged 16 and above account for more than 80 percent of all the world’s internet users, meaning that roughly 4.95 billion people in this age group use the internet today.

And when we apply GWI’s AI adoption figure to that figure for adult internet adoption, the data indicates that an impressive 4.02 billion adults already use some form of AI each month.

Half of humanity uses AI

It’s important to stress that GWI’s adoption figure encompasses all AI tools and activities, including the use of AI functionality within broader software applications like Microsoft Office and Google Workplace, graphics tools like Canva and Adobe Creative Cloud, and standalone LLM platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude.

And that broader definition of AI explains why this 4 billion figure is so much higher than the 2.42 billion figure we’re reporting for the more specific use of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT (more on that in a moment).

For context, those 4.02 billion users already equate to 48.6 percent of the world’s total population, regardless of age.

However, it’s important to highlight that our 4.02 billion figure only represents the use of AI amongst people aged 16 and above.

And with other data suggesting that school-age children may be particularly avid users of AI, there’s a good chance that the total AI user figure is markedly higher than this adult total suggests.

Indeed, if just 10 percent of the world’s internet users below the age of 16 use AI – which seems highly probable given the available data – that would mean more than half of the world’s total population already uses AI.

At first, that figure might sound astonishing.

But when we consider that AI summaries are already inescapable at the top of Google search results, and that 79.3 percent of online adults use search engines each month, a global AI adoption rate in excess of 50 percent is absolutely plausible.

Western markets lag in AI use

For perspective, Japan is the only country out of the 54 geographies covered by GWI’s Core survey where fewer than half of adult respondents say that they used AI within the past month.

However, it’s particularly interesting to note that AI adoption rates across most countries in Europe and Northern America fall well below the global average.

For example, just 71.5 percent of online adults in the United States say that they used AI within the past month, which is almost 10 percentage points below the global average.

Meanwhile, AI adoption in the UK is even lower, with just 62.8 percent of GWI’s survey respondents saying that they’ve used AI within the past 30 days.

Relatively speaking, that means Britons are more than 20 percent less likely than the global average to use AI, and fewer than 2 in 3 of the country’s adult internet users have used AI within the past month.

Germany, France, and Canada also sit low in the rankings, in stark contrast to adoption rates across Asia, Africa, and Southern America.

Asia leads AI adoption

And in light of geopolitical tensions surrounding AI, it’s particularly interesting to note that 86.4 percent of online adults in China use AI today.

These figures suggest that more than 1 billion people in China already use AI technologies, and also that online adults in China are more than 20 percent more likely to use AI than their American peers.

However, Chinese internet users are not the most avid users of AI.

Kenya tops the rankings for AI use in GWI’s latest survey, with a whopping 97.5 percent of survey respondents in the country saying that they’ve used at least one AI tool within the past month.

The UAE ranks second on 94.2 percent, while Indonesia ranks third, with 93.6 percent.

Moreover, a number of Indonesia’s neighbours also place towards the top of GWI’s rankings, with AI adoption across the South-East Asia region currently sitting at an impressive 91.8 percent of all online adults.

AI approaching ubiquity amongst Gen Z

As we see so often in GWI’s rich data, AI adoption rates vary meaningfully by age, but differences by gender are significantly less marked than media headlines might have you believe.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger people are the most likely to use AI today, with close to 9 in 10 internet users aged 16 to 24 (89.4 percent) saying that they’ve used AI tools within the past 30 days.

Moreover, more than 90 percent of men in this age group already use AI on a monthly basis.

Active AI usage rates remain well above 80 percent amongst users aged 25 to 44 too, with men in this age group slightly more likely than their female peers to say that they use these tools on a regular basis.

Usage dips just below 80 percent for online adults aged 45 to 54, while more than two-thirds of internet users aged 55 to 64 have already boarded the AI bandwagon.

Adoption rates fall below 50 percent amongst internet users aged 65 and above, but it’s important to note that – for technical reasons – GWI’s sample amongst this age group is more concentrated in European and Northern American markets, where overall AI use tends to be meaningfully lower than the global average.

For added perspective, while these data points come from different questions in GWI’s survey, the data suggests that active use of AI amongst online adults (81.2 percent) may already be higher than their active use of:

Search engines (79.3 percent)
Email (74.4 percent)
Online shopping (74.2 percent)

This comparison reveals that, despite its relative infancy, AI has already found a regular place in the lives of billions of people.

But that finding begs a far more important question: what are people actually using AI for?

What people use AI for

Amongst the hundreds of thousands of people who participated in GWI’s latest survey, “finding information” came out as the top motivation for using AI, and by some margin.

More specifically, 58.8 percent of active AI users in GWI’s sample selected this answer option, which is more than 1½ times higher than the second top motivation.

Given that “finding information” is also the top motivation for using the internet, this finding might not come as a surprise.

However, it’s fascinating to see that “getting advice on problems” ranks second across the nine, pre-defined answer options in GWI’s survey, with 37.8 percent of AI users citing this motivation.

Meanwhile, it’s encouraging to see that well over one-third of active AI users – 37.0 percent – use these tools to “learn or improve skills”.

Overall, the relative importance and ranking of these findings aligns with the two studies that we featured in our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report, even though all of these studies used quite different approaches and methodologies.

But perhaps the most important takeaway from this data is that people are using AI for a wide variety of different needs.

Indeed, out of the nine pre-defined answer options proposed in GWI’s survey, active AI users selected an average of 3.1 answers each, indicating that individuals are already using AI to satisfy multiple needs and objectives.

And it’s particularly telling that more than a quarter of active AI users – 26.5 percent – say that they use AI for entertainment.

Think about that for a moment: despite these tools only being widely accessible to the public for 3½ years, more than 1 billion people already use AI for entertainment.

AI motivations by age

When we explore AI motivations by demographic, “finding information” tops the AI rankings across all age groups in GWI’s survey, but it’s worth highlighting that this motivation is especially prevalent amongst retirees – something that may be of particular interest to marketers and to policymakers.

“Learning or improving skills” ranks second amongst younger age groups, but its relative importance declines with age, and this motivation ranks just seventh amongst AI users aged 65 and above.

However, “getting advice on problems” remains popular across all age groups, revealing that this activity has quickly established itself as a universal use case for AI.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note that the relative importance of “getting personalised recommendations” tends to vary by age.

Amongst internet users aged 65 and above, this use case ranks third with 20.4 percent, highlighting its relative importance for older users.

However, while “getting personalised recommendations” only ranks seventh amongst AI motivations for internet users aged 16 to 24, the overall share of respondents in this age group who selected this option – 31.1 percent – is considerably higher than the equivalent value share amongst retirees.

Looking more broadly though, these varying motivations and usage patterns indicate that people have been quick to identify where AI fits within their individual lives, and this suggests that the outlook for continued AI use is particularly strong.

AI hopes and fears

And it’s not just GWI’s data that delivers these findings.

In a recent AI-fielded qualitative survey of more than 80,000 respondents across 159 countries, Anthropic identified people’s primary hopes and fears relating to AI use.

The survey approach in itself was quite novel, with Anthropic using its AI Interviewer to field the survey questions, follow up with prompts for answer expansion and clarification, and then to analyse and classify responses.

You can read the full research methodology here, but what does this huge study actually reveal?

What people want from AI

When it comes to people’s hopes for AI, “professional excellence” topped the rankings, with 18.8 percent of survey respondents providing a qualitative response that Anthropic’s Claude AI model then classified within this answer category.

On this finding, Anthropic’s human survey analysts offered the following perspective:

“AI is used heavily for work, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the largest group of people sought “professional excellence” – wanting AI to handle mundane tasks so they can focus on strategic, higher-level problems.”

“Professional transformation” ranked second, with 13.7 percent of responses aligning with this category, while “life management” placed third, with 13.5 percent.

Interestingly, the survey’s human analysts note that support and advice accounted for an important share of the 11,000+ responses that Claude categorised as “personal transformation”:

“Within this category, the desires were diverse, ranging from cognitive partnership and collaboration (24 percent), to support with mental health (21 percent) or physical health (8 percent), and even romantic connection with AI (5 percent).”

Perhaps the most striking figure within that statement is that 5 percent of these responses referenced a desire for “romantic connection with AI”, which suggests that roughly 550 respondents out of 80,508 indicated that this is what they most want from AI.

However, the fact that more than 1 in 5 of the respondents who referenced “personal transformation” expressed hopes relating to mental health needs is equally profound.

Indeed, if this finding applied equally across all of the world’s generative AI users, it would mean that roughly 70 million users already hope that AI can help them manage and improve their mental and emotional wellbeing.

People’s top AI fears

At the other end of the spectrum, despite Hollywood’s long-standing fascination with a potential AI apocalypse, it seems that everyday people have more mundane fears when it comes to artificial intelligence.

In Anthropic’s study, “unreliability” topped people’s list of AI concerns, with 26.7 percent of respondents citing issues such as AI “hallucinations”, response inaccuracy, and fake citations.

Concerns relating to “jobs and the economy” ranked second, with 22.3 percent of responses referencing fears relating to unemployment, job displacement, wage inequality, and related negative impacts.

And for added reference, if we applied that percentage across all the world’s generative AI users, the data suggests that more than half a billion AI users already worry about AI’s impact on their job and their employment prospects.

Meanwhile, worries about “autonomy and agency” defined the third most common category of AI-related fears, with 21.9 percent of respondents expressing concerns about potential loss of control over decision-making, and humans becoming generally more “passive”.

However, “existential threats” ranked last out of the 13 response categories identified by Claude, with only 6.7 percent of respondents – barely 1 in 16 people – expressing fears that AI might become uncontrollable, or instigate the demise of humanity.

Overall people expressed an average of 2.3 concerns each, but roughly 11 percent of respondents expressed no clear concern.

Of these more serene respondents, the survey’s human analysts note that:

“[They] tended to see AI as a neutral tool, comparing it to electricity or the internet, or they otherwise felt confident that problems that arose because of it could be solved through adaptation.”

The rapid rise of generative AI

However, these concerns appear to have done little to dampen people’s enthusiasm for increased use of AI tools.

Indeed, amongst the world’s 4 billion active AI users, Manochi’s research indicates that roughly 60 percent – 2.42 billion – already use standalone generative AI (GenAI) platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Doubao.

You’ve doubtless seen plenty of questionable figures quoted for AI use though, so for transparency and reassurance, let’s explore how Manochi calculates its figure for GenAI adoption.

Our starting point is the latest, 900 million weekly active ChatGPT user figure published by OpenAI.

We then use Similarweb’s global App Intelligence data to understand ChatGPT’s ratio of monthly to weekly active users, which stood at roughly 1.27 in February 2026.

This ratio suggests that ChatGPT now has somewhere in the region of 1.15 billion monthly active users (MAU).

For comparison, 31.2 percent of GWI’s global sample of online adults say that they used ChatGPT within the past month, which GWI itself converts to a “universe” figure of 1.03 billion ChatGPT users amongst internet users aged 16 and above across its 54 survey markets.

And if we assume that a meaningful number of people outside of GWI’s survey markets use ChatGPT, together with global users below the age of 16 who use ChatGPT to help with homework, the resulting total isn’t massively dissimilar to the OpenAI–Similarweb figure that we calculated above.

Next up, we use a custom industry analysis within Similarweb’s Web Intelligence suite to identify the proportion of visitors to various LLM platforms who only visit ChatGPT.

Based on the definitions and benchmarks that we’ve included within our custom industry, this “exclusive” ChatGPT user base equated to just over 63 percent of the market in February 2026.

This in turn tells us that just under 37 percent of active GenAI users do not use ChatGPT on a monthly basis, equating to roughly 662 million MAU.

And if we add those non-ChatGPT users to our ChatGPT MAU figure of 1.15 billion, we reach 1.81 billion MAU.

But we also need to consider the fact that most of China’s GenAI users operate behind the country’s “Great Firewall”, which impedes their access to non-domestic tools.

We’re aware that some internet users in China may be able to access non-domestic platforms via VPNs, but the available data suggests that domestic GenAI platforms such as Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek are significantly more popular than their Western counterparts amongst China’s AI users.

Moreover, while we acknowledge the potential for user duplication, our analysis indicates that Mainland Chinese users of non-domestic LLMs only account for a small percentage of the total global GenAI user base.

Based on this, we add the 42.8 percent of internet users within Mainland China who use GenAI each month, as reported in CNNIC’s 57th Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development (full Mandarin version here).

And that takes us to our global active GenAI user figure of 2.42 billion.

However, as with our social media user identities figure, it’s important to stress that there’s inevitably a risk of user overlap and duplication within these values.

Consequently, we’d counsel against interpreting this figure as 2.42 billion “people”, and we encourage readers to use the term “active GenAI users” instead.

Comparisons with population still enable us to put user values in perspective though, so it’s worth considering that this active GenAI user figure equates to 29.2 percent of the global population.

And when we consider that GenAI technologies only became widely accessible to the general public around 3½ years ago, that’s a truly exceptional achievement.

Outlook for GenAI growth

But despite already delivering healthy, ten-digit user numbers, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that GenAI adoption will continue to grow rapidly over the coming months.

Firstly, using the same calculation approach that we detailed above, Manochi calculates that active GenAI users have increased by a hefty 141 percent over the past 12 months, thanks to the addition of 1.4 billion new monthly active users.

However, despite that healthy growth, the world’s 2.42 billion GenAI users only account for 60 percent of the world’s 4 billion total AI users, indicating that more than 1.5 billion people who already use some form of AI do not currently make regular use of standalone GenAI platforms and LLMs.

And furthermore, GWI data from Q2 2025 revealed that just under half of all online adults – 48.7 percent – were “excited” about artificial intelligence.

By contrast, our 2.42 billion GenAI user figure equates to just 40 percent of the world’s internet users.

And the difference between these numbers suggests that more than half a billion people who are “excited” about AI are yet to incorporate GenAI into their regular online activities.

So, all things considered, we should expect to see sustained double-digit growth in GenAI user numbers over the coming months.

The world’s most used GenAI platforms

As you’ve probably deduced from the data we’ve already explored, ChatGPT is currently the world’s most widely used GenAI platform, but trends over recent months offer compelling evidence that AI is not a one-horse race.

Top GenAI mobile apps

For context, when it comes to understanding the regular and sustained use of individual GenAI platforms, mobile apps offer particularly valuable insights, not least because their users have gone to the effort of downloading the app and creating a user account.

And Similarweb’s global App Intelligence data reveals that – outside of China – ChatGPT dominates GenAI app use, with nearly 4 times as many monthly active users as its next nearest rival.

More specifically, Similarweb’s data shows that ChatGPT had 592 million monthly active users around the world in February 2026, based on the combined use of mobile apps that users downloaded from the iOS and Google Play stores.

By comparison, Google’s Gemini apps had 152 million monthly active users, while Grok’s mobile apps had just under 62 million MAUs.

DeepSeek ranks fourth in this dataset with 53.3 million MAUs, but it’s worth highlighting that this active user figure has fallen by almost 40 percent since the app’s explosive arrival in early 2025.

Top GenAI web platforms

ChatGPT also tops the rankings for web-based platform use, but – while the brand still commands a comfortable margin – its lead is getting smaller.

Similarweb’s traffic data indicates that chatgpt.com attracted 460 million unique monthly visitors in February 2026, but that figure has remained relatively static over recent months.

And in fact, ChatGPT’s latest unique visitor total is more than 5 percent lower than the site’s unique visitor figure for August 2025.

For reassurance, active user numbers for ChatGPT’s mobile app continue to grow, so readers should not interpret this trend as any sign that ChatGPT is losing users.

However, the decline in the platform’s unique web visitors is still an important trend, especially when viewed in the context of trends for other platforms.

Google’s Gemini ranks second in Similarweb’s traffic data, with gemini.google.com attracting 253 million unique visitors in February 2026.

For comparison, that’s just 55 percent of the number of unique visitors that accessed chatgpt.com during the same period.

However, Gemini’s unique monthly visitor figure has more than doubled (+107 percent) since August 2025, while ChatGPT’s unique visitor figures declined during the same period.

DeepSeek claims third place in the worldwide GenAI web rankings based on unique visitor traffic outside of China, with deepseek.com attracting 49.4 million unique visitors in February 2026.

X’s grok.com ranks fourth in this dataset with 43.7 million unique monthly visitors, while Claude completes the top five, attracting 37.2 million unique visitors in February 2026.

GenAI use in China

CNNIC’s 57th Statistical Report on the use of connected devices and services in China reveals (in Mandarin) that more than 4 in 10 internet users in the country – 42.8 percent – used at least one GenAI platform in December 2025.

The report also highlights that GenAI use in China has more than doubled over the past year.

Indeed, active user figures grew by more than 350 million in the 12 months ending in December 2025, resulting in year-on-year growth of more than 140 percent.

Moreover, current trends indicate that China’s GenAI adoption rate will exceed 50 percent of internet users within the next few months, despite the fact that the country’s use of these tools is already ahead of the global average.

As we see elsewhere in the world, however, GenAI adoption in China skews towards younger users, with users below the age of 20 accounting for more than a quarter of the country’s total GenAI user base.

CNNIC’s data indicates that the vast majority of China’s GenAI users – 86 percent – use mobile apps to access these services, while more than 4 in 10 (41.4 percent) use built-in assistants on their devices (e.g. Siri on iPhone).

However, web applications are still quite popular amongst Chinese users, despite relatively low levels of overall web use in the country compared with the rest of the world.

Indeed, CNNIC’s data indicates that just over 1 in 3 Chinese users – 33.7 percent – accesses GenAI platforms via “web applications”.

Chinese users’ GenAI motivations

As we see elsewhere in the world, “finding answers to questions” is the primary motivation cited by China’s GenAI users for their adoption of these tools, with more than three-quarters of CNNIC’s survey respondents (76 percent) stating that this is one of the reasons why they use generative AI.

In second place, just under half of respondents – 47.8 percent – cited “generating images and videos”, while “generating and processing text” ranked third, with 37.6 percent.

Meanwhile, almost a third of China’s GenAI users – 32.5 percent, or close to 200 million people – already use GenAI at work, for activities such as creating summaries, capturing meeting minutes, and generating presentations.

However, despite impressive adoption figures, CNNIC’s data suggests that AI usage isn’t quite as central to Chinese internet users’ online habits as activities like watching videos.

For example, the 57th Statistical Report states that the typical Chinese internet user spends just over 3 hours per month using GenAI platforms, which equates to roughly 6 minutes per day.

But for comparison, CNNIC’s data indicates that the typical Chinese internet user spends almost 23 hours per month watching long form videos – more than seven times longer than they spend using GenAI platforms.

Top AI platforms in China

Many of the platforms we explored in the previous section remain blocked in China, and while there is evidence to suggest that Chinese users enjoy varying levels of access via VPNs, data suggests that domestic platforms are far more popular choices in China.

A chart published by the ever-informative Rest Of World using QuestMobile data indicates that ByteDance’s Doubao platform topped the AI app user rankings at the end of 2025, with 155 million weekly active users (WAU).

DeepSeek ranked second in this dataset, with 82 million WAU, while Tencent’s Yuanbao placed third, with 21 million WAU.

However, reports indicate that Chinese users’ AI preferences evolve quickly, and loyalties can quickly switch with the release of new models and features.

Most young adults use ChatGPT every month

Expanding our geographical perspective, data for self-reported behaviour indicates that more than half of younger internet users between the ages of 16 and 24 living outside of China now use ChatGPT at least once a month.

GWI’s most recent survey found that 55.4 percent of internet users in this “Gen Z” cohort used ChatGPT within the past 30 days, with use relatively balanced across both men and women within this particular age group.

As we often see within GWI’s data though, behaviours vary meaningfully by geography, even within this tighter age band.

For example, a hefty 82.3 percent of respondents aged 16 to 24 in Morocco say that they used ChatGPT within the past month, while 70.1 percent of Gen Z respondents in Brazil also answered in the affirmative.

ChatGPT use amongst this younger age group remains elevated elsewhere too, with more than two-thirds of internet users in a number of countries using the world’s most popular GenAI platform at least once within the past month:

Switzerland: 69.0 percent
Croatia: 68.8 percent
Spain: 67.5 percent
Malaysia: 67.4 percent
Belgium: 66.9 percent
Philippines: 66.8 percent

More broadly, monthly ChatGPT use amongst this youngest generation in GWI’s survey sits above 50 percent in most other countries outside of China, but it’s interesting to note that fewer than 1 in 3 internet users aged 16 to 24 use ChatGPT in Japan (28.9 percent), Hong Kong (30.6 percent), and Ghana (31.9 percent).

And somewhat surprisingly, ChatGPT use in the United States also falls below the global average for this cohort, with just 45.9 percent of the country’s internet users aged 16 to 24 saying that they used OpenAI’s primary LLM platform within the past month.

Perspective: Yahoo vs ChatGPT

But after all those eye-watering AI figures, let’s consider a somewhat startling revelation: Yahoo still attracts more web traffic than ChatGPT.

More specifically, if we combine web traffic to yahoo.com and yahoo.co.jp, data from Similarweb suggests that the Yahoo brand still attracts a total of 5.70 billion web visits each month.

The equivalent figure for chatgpt.com is 5.53 billion.

In other words, Yahoo still attracts roughly 3 percent more monthly visits than ChatGPT does.

Just sit with that for a moment: despite relentless media coverage over the past 3½ years – not to mention OpenAI’s hundreds of billions of dollars in investment – ChatGPT still hasn’t matched the web traffic volume of a brand that launched more than 32 years ago, in January 1994.

Admittedly, ChatGPT has a significantly larger unique user base than Yahoo does, and Similarweb’s data also suggests that most ChatGPT activity takes place in the platform’s mobile app rather than on its website.

However, there’s an even more startling finding in Similarweb’s data.

Amongst audiences aged 45 and above – which, crucially, account for more than half of consumer spend across many of the world’s largest economies – the combination of yahoo.com and yahoo.co.jp delivers nearly twice as much monthly web traffic as chatgpt.com does.

None of this is to say that ChatGPT doesn’t offer compelling opportunities of course, and similarly, these figures don’t necessarily imply that Yahoo is an appropriate choice for your brand’s marketing needs.

And it’s also worth noting that Semrush’s data tells quite a different story, with the company’s intelligence putting ChatGPT’s primary domain well ahead of combined Yahoo traffic when it comes to average monthly website visits.

However, the fact that Yahoo still delivers such impressive traffic is yet another reminder that the world’s digital behaviours change far more slowly than media headlines and LinkedIn “slopbait” might have you believe.

And perhaps more importantly, these figures demonstrate that marketers still need a balanced mix.

Our audiences continue to use a wide variety of digital properties each day, and not all of those brands make for sexy media headlines.

Indeed, despite their apparent lack of newsworthiness, many of these platforms continue to offer valuable opportunities to reach and engage the very same audiences, and – in many cases – properties that don’t make the headlines can offer significant cost efficiencies.

Search vs AI in the buyer journey

And on that note, let’s turn our attention to the role that different channels and platforms play within the purchase journey.

Data shows that search engines remain the primary source of brand awareness amongst the world’s online adults, with 32.4 percent of global internet users aged 16+ telling GWI that they discover new brands, products and services via platforms like Google and DuckDuckGo.

TV ads rank a close second, with 31.2 percent of GWI’s survey sample citing this channel as a source of brand discovery, while social media ads rank third at an overall level, at 30.1 percent.

But despite the hyperbole surrounding AI tools in the marketing press, just 14.8 percent of people say that they discover brands via artificial intelligence tools, meaning that these tools don’t even feature in internet users’ top 15 sources of brand discovery today.

Indeed, the world’s online audiences still say they’re more likely to discover brands via out-of-home posters and billboards (16.7 percent) than they are to learn about new brands from platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

So, while AI use is undoubtedly worthy of marketers’ attention, this data shows that we need to invest time to understand where these platforms fit within people’s lives and decision-making journeys.

Channels for brand research

Moreover, GWI’s data reveals that internet users are still more than twice as likely to use search engines to research potential purchases as they are to consult artificial intelligence platforms.

More specifically, 45.8 percent of online adults say that they use search engines like Google when researching brands, products, and services, compared with 22.1 percent who say that they use artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT.

However, this simple comparison doesn’t tell the whole story.

And crucially, GWI’s quarterly survey indicates that – on a relative basis – the number of people using search engines for brand research has fallen by more than 10 percent over the past 18 months.

The company’s Q2 2024 wave of data found that more than half of online adults – 51.3 percent – used tools like Google Search and Bing to research brands they were considering buying, but in the most recent wave (Q4 2025), that figure had dropped to just 45.8 percent.

But despite that downward trend, search engines remain people’s top destination when researching potential purchases.

And crucially, as is so often the case in marketing, the use of these two channels is not mutually exclusive.

In other words, there’s nothing stopping you from using both search and AI in your marketing activities.

The marketing industry is still trying to work out how best to harness GenAI though, and while ads will likely become an increasingly important feature on platforms like ChatGPT over the coming months, “organic” GenAI will likely remain the most important opportunity for the foreseeable future.

If you want to explore what “organic” GenAI looks like – and understand how some brands are already turning it to their advantage – head over to our recent analysis of Similarweb’s 2026 GenAI Visibility Index Report.

Use of search engines

But let’s return our attention to search engines, because GWI’s data reveals some more important trends here.

Across all activities, 79.3 percent of online adults say that they visit search engines each month, which ranks these platforms third in GWI’s list of the types of websites and apps that people use most frequently.

And for added perspective, it’s worth highlighting that if we remove China and Russia from this dataset – both of which are “non-Google” markets – the use of search engines increases to an average of 86.1 percent.

It’s also interesting to note that search engines retain broad appeal across all demographics.

Indeed, contrary to media headlines, younger age groups are still just as likely as older generations to use search engines on a regular basis.

Similarly, use of search engines is relatively evenly balanced by gender, although we see a slight female skew amongst younger age groups, and a slight male skew amongst older people.

The decline of search?

However, the most revealing finding in this dataset relates to trends in the use of search engines over time.

GWI’s data shows that use of search engines has been declining steadily over the past 5 years, but this is the first time that global usage rates have fallen below 80 percent.

Having said that, we’ve seen consistent fluctuations in this data point over recent years, and in fact, the use of search engines actually increased each quarter between Q4 2022 and Q2 2024 – i.e. even after ChatGPT launched to the public in November 2022.

But it’s still important for marketers to be aware that regular use of search engines fell by a relative 4 percent (3.1 percentage points) between Q2 2024 and Q4 2025, from 82.4 percent to 79.3 percent.

Looking more closely

However, a slightly different story emerges when we look at trends in the use of individual search platforms, even if the overall implications are similar.

Notably, outside of China and Russia – where search preferences are markedly different to those we see in the rest of the world – GWI’s data suggests that the use of Bing and DuckDuckGo has increased over the past 18 months.

The latest usage figures for these platforms are still below their respective peaks over the past 5 years, but the fact that both have seen usage increase over recent months is still noteworthy.

And while GWI’s data suggests that the share of online adults outside of China and Russia that use Google has declined over the past 18 months, the pace of that decline is markedly lower than the decline we see for the use of search engines overall.

So, while we’ll keep a close eye on these trends, there may be more to this story than the headline data suggests.

Google vs ChatGPT

And furthermore, as is so often the case, different datasets offer different perspectives with different implications.

For example, Similarweb’s Web Intelligence data reveals that Google’s share of traffic to the top 10,000 websites has actually increased over the past 6 months, whereas ChatGPT’s share of web traffic has fallen.

In our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report, we reported that google.com accounted for 19.56 percent of traffic across the world’s top 10,000 domains between 01 June 2025 and 31 August, while chatgpt.com accounted for 1.33 percent.

However, fast forward six months, and google.com accounted for 19.79 percent of traffic between 01 December 2025 and 28 February 2026, whereas chatgpt.com accounted for 1.32 percent.

In other words, Google’s share of web traffic increased by 0.23 percentage points over the past 6 months, while ChatGPT’s share declined by 0.01 percentage points.

On a relative basis, that equates to an increase of 1.2 percent for Google, and a decrease of 0.8 percent for ChatGPT.

Now, admittedly, changes equating to fractions of a percent aren’t really that newsworthy.

But ironically, that lack of newsworthiness is newsworthy in itself, because it demonstrates that Google is not “dying”.

And once again, this data highlights why marketers must do their own due diligence, and use reputable data to examine what people are really doing on the internet.

Google still dominates

For added perspective, Similarweb’s data indicates that google.com attracted an average of 3.19 billion unique monthly visitors between December 2025 and February 2026, whereas the equivalent figure for ChatGPT is 456 million.

In other words, Google’s web audience is still 7 times larger than that of ChatGPT.

However, somewhat counterintuitively, Google’s unique visitor count actually declined over the past six months, whereas ChatGPT’s increased.

Similarweb’s data indicates that Google’s website attracted an average of 3.22 billion unique monthly visitors (AUMV) for the period between 01 June 2025 and 31 August 2025.

Meanwhile, for the three months between 01 December 2025 and 28 February 2026, this average had fallen to 3.19 billion, resulting in a net decline of close to 23 million AUMV, or 0.7 percent.

Conversely, ChatGPT’s website AUMV figure for the June to August 2025 period was 447 million, but this increased to 456 million AUMV for the December to February period. That means ChatGPT added 9 million AUMV over the past six months, for an increase of 2.0 percent.

Mobile app data

But web traffic only tells one side of the story, so let’s take a look at trends in the use of these platforms’ mobile apps too.

Based on average worldwide monthly active users for the same two 3-month periods that we explored above, Similarweb’s App Intelligence data indicates that Google’s app users increased by 0.6 percent over the past six months, whereas the equivalent growth figure for ChatGPT’s mobile app is meaningfully higher, at 8.0 percent.

However, it’s easier to deliver more rapid growth when starting from a smaller base, so we also need to consider the change in overall user numbers.

And sure enough, absolute growth figures offer valuable perspective.

Similarweb’s data shows that use of Google’s mobile app averaged 1.60 billion MAU for the three months from 01 June 2025 and 31 August 2026, but this figure increased to 1.61 billion MAU for the period between 01 December 2025 and 28 February 2026 – i.e. an increase of 10 million average MAU.

Meanwhile, the equivalent figures for ChatGPT’s mobile app are 539 million for the earlier period, and 582 million for the most recent three-month period, delivering an increase of 43 million average MAU.

In other words, use of ChatGPT’s apps does appear to be growing more quickly, but Google’s app still has 2.8 times as many users as ChatGPT’s does.

Getting nerdy with the data

It’s important to stress that many of the people who use these platforms’ mobile apps also use their respective websites, and there’s no practical way to deduplicate overlaps using the available data.

However, if we assume that such overlaps are broadly consistent for both platforms, a comparison of their combined figures can still provide useful perspective.

For comparison, here’s what Similarweb’s data tells us about these combined web and app use figures:

Period from 01 June 2025 to 31 August 2025

Google’s aggregated (non-unique) user base: 4.82 billion
ChatGPT’s aggregated (non-unique) user base: 987 million

Period from 01 December 2025 to 28 February 2026

Google’s aggregated (non-unique) user base: 4.80 billion
ChatGPT’s aggregated (non-unique) user base: 1.04 billion

This data suggests that Google’s overall active user base may have declined by roughly 0.26 percent over the past six months, while ChatGPT’s overall active user base may have increased by 5.27 percent.

However, the period from 01 December to 28 February has two fewer days than the period 01 June to 31 August, and that 2.2 percent difference in the number of days could easily account for all of the change that we see in Google’s numbers.

Moreover, data indicates that the year-end period is likely the quietest period of the year for digital activity.

As a result, there’s a real chance that the change in Google’s aggregated numbers is simply the result of seasonality, and the apparent decline may not be indicative of any actual change in people’s preferences or behaviours.

On the other hand, ChatGPT’s stronger figures suggest that the platform has gained tangible momentum over the past six months, meaning that ChatGPT has likely gained ground on Google since the middle of last year.

However – and this is a very important caveat – Google’s aggregated user base is still a hefty 4.6 times larger than ChatGPT’s, and our analysis of the available data indicates that Google still has at least 2.5 billion more active users than ChatGPT.

Google vs ChatGPT: conclusions

So what should we take away from all this data?

Well, the first thing to highlight is that both Google and ChatGPT now have user bases numbering in the billions, which means that both offer hugely compelling opportunities.

But crucially, there’s nothing to stop you using both of them.

Of course, budgets may be an important consideration here, especially because AI platforms may not yet have their own defined line item in marketing plans.

However, my counsel here would be to avoid transferring money you currently allocate to search into AI.

All of the data we’ve seen so far indicates that search remains critical across the marketing mix, so it would be very risky to take money away from SEM and SEO.

Instead, I’d recommend looking across the rest of your marketing mix, in order to identify other channels that might be underperforming.

In other words, when it comes to budgeting, don’t think in terms of “search vs AI”.

And despite its clear promise, beware of jumping on the AI bandwagon too.

Before you get distracted by “shiny new toys”, try to list out all of the things that you could spend your marketing budget on, and identify which of those you’re already confident can deliver the majority of your marketing objectives.

Based on that prioritised list, aim to invest at least 80 percent of your budget in what you already know works.

Only then should you consider whether you’d like to use your remaining 20 percent for experiments, or whether you’d prefer to invest that remainder in tried-and-tested channels as well.

Social media continues to grow

Talking of tried-and-tested channels, Manochi’s analysis indicates that active social media user identities have reached 5.79 billion, with that global total now equivalent to 69.9 percent of the world’s total population.

And in another contradiction of clickbait, all the evidence indicates that social media use continues to grow.

Data shows that active social media user identities increased by 294 million over the past 12 months, delivering an annualised growth rate of 5.4 percent.

To put that growth in context, an average of more than 800,000 new users per day started using social media over the past 12 months, for an average of 9.3 new users every second.

Meanwhile, the latest figures indicate that hundreds of millions more people now use social media platforms each month than watch broadcast and cable TV.

There seems to be endless controversy regarding social media use though, and media headlines have been proclaiming social media’s demise since at least 2009.

So, given the level of misinformation surrounding social media use, let’s corroborate Manochi’s proprietary figures using other, reputable data.

GWI data

First up, GWI’s research indicates that 96.7 percent of online adults aged 16 and above use either instant messaging or social networks each month.

As we saw earlier, GWI’s latest survey polled more than 240,000 respondents across 54 of the world’s largest economies, whose responses represent more than 80 percent of the world’s total internet user base.

However, it’s interesting to note that social media use tends to be higher amongst the developing economies included in GWI’s survey, whereas social media use is actually below average across Europe and Northern America.

As a result, there’s a realistic possibility that social media use amongst internet users in the countries not covered by GWI’s survey is higher than GWI’s reported average, which would in turn raise the overall average.

However, even if we take GWI’s average usage figure of 96.7 percent to be representative of all the world’s online adults, that would equate to a social media user total of 4.79 billion.

Meanwhile, GWI’s Kids survey indicates that social networking and instant messaging are also popular amongst online audiences aged 8 to 15, with average usage rates across the 18 countries included in this survey reaching 84.7 percent in the most recent wave of research.

It’s important to highlight that GWI’s Kids survey covers fewer geographies than its Core survey though (18 vs 54, respectively), and the countries included in the Kids sample also tend to be more affluent.

Consequently, if the geographical trends we saw above for GWI’s Core survey also apply to its Kids survey, we might expect the overall social media adoption rate amongst this younger demographic to be a bit higher than the average for GWI’s Kids sample.

And for added perspective here, data in GWI’s Core survey shows that younger people are the most likely to use social platforms.

However, even if we take the GWI Kids average of 84.7 percent and apply it across all internet users below the age of 16, that would equate to an additional 1.16 billion social media users.

And that in turn gives us a total global social media user figure of 5.95 billion, which is roughly 2.7 percent higher than our reported social media user identities figure.

GSMA Intelligence data

Next up, GSMA intelligence’s research focuses on mobile internet use across lower and middle-income countries (LMICs), so it offers a valuable perspective on social media-related activity outside of the wealthier nations covered by GWI’s research.

GSMA intelligence’s recent State of Mobile Internet Connectivity 2025 report includes a detailed analysis of what adults in these regions are doing when they go online, and the research concludes that online video (e.g. YouTube and TikTok), instant messaging, and social media are the most common connected activities in LMICs.

Across the 15 countries included in their research, GSMA Intelligence reports that an average of 88 to 89 percent of mobile internet users aged 18+ engage in each of these activities in their own right, which suggests that the aggregated engagement rate for at least one of those three activities – i.e. any one of online video or instant messaging or social media – will likely be well in excess of 90 percent.

But even if we were to apply GSMA Intelligence’s highest single-channel adoption rate of 89 percent to non-GWI countries, the resulting global social media user figure would still exceed 5.8 billion.

In other words, our reported social media user figure of 5.79 billion may actually be somewhat conservative.

So, safe in the knowledge that social media use is still very much “a thing”, let’s turn our attention to what people are actually doing on social channels.

Social media motivations

GWI’s latest data shows that just under half of the world’s adult social media users – 49.0 percent – say that they visit social media channels to “keep in touch with friends and family”.

“Filling spare time” ranks second, with 39.3 percent of social media users aged 16+ selecting this pre-defined answer option, while “reading news stories” ranks third, at 30.1 percent.

It’s worth highlighting that respondents could choose more than one option though, and on average, people cited just over 4.5 reasons for using social media.

However, there’s been a noticeable dip in the average number of motivations cited by each social media user over the past few months, which is a trend marketers will want to keep their eye on.

As you might expect, motivations vary meaningfully by age, but “keeping in touch with friends and family” tops the rankings across all age groups.

Meanwhile, younger people are more likely to turn to social platforms for distraction and entertainment, whereas reading the news and shopping tend to rank higher amongst older age groups.

Moreover, GWI’s data reveals that people’s motivations and activities vary meaningfully by platform.

For example, more than 7 in 10 Facebook users visit the platform to stay in touch with friends and family, but barely a quarter of TikTok users access the short video platform for this purpose.

However, more than 80 percent of TikTok users say that they visit the platform to look for funny or entertaining content, whereas that figure is just 21.3 percent for Pinterest.

The world’s most used social platforms

But on that note, which social platforms attract the largest audiences?

Based on GWI’s data for self-declared use, Facebook remains the world’s most popular social platform, with 56.3 percent of the world’s internet users aged 16 and above saying they’ve used the platform within the past month.

YouTube ranks second, with 55.3 percent, and Instagram places third, at 54.6 percent.

WhatsApp’s 54.4 percent puts the messenger in fourth place, while Messenger lands fifth, at 36.9 percent.

And for reference, TikTok places sixth, with 36 percent [note: as per ByteDance’s corporate reporting, we separate values for TikTok and Douyin].

However, it’s worth stressing that this GWI dataset includes internet users in China and Russia, where many Western platforms are currently blocked or restricted.

And if we remove those two countries from this dataset, the following ranking emerges:

Facebook: 73.4 percent
Instagram: 71.4 percent
YouTube: 70.6 percent
WhatsApp: 69.8 percent
Messenger: 48.2 percent
TikTok: 47.5 percent

Active app use

Meanwhile, Similarweb’s App Intelligence data offers a different ranking.

Based on actual open rates of the respective platforms’ apps across millions of smartphone handsets around the world, YouTube tops the social media rankings by a meaningful margin.

We report Similarweb’s active user data as an index, but that still allows us to see that second-placed WhatsApp’s active app user base is just 87.4 percent the size of YouTube’s.

Instagram ranks third in this dataset, while Facebook only places fourth, with Similarweb’s data suggesting that Facebook’s active app audience is only three-quarters the size of YouTube’s.

TikTok rounds out the top five here, but Similarweb’s data indicates that YouTube’s app has close to 1.5 times as many monthly active users as TikTok’s does.

Getting fully informed

User numbers aren’t the only thing that matters when it comes to social media platforms though, especially when we consider that we can reach almost all of the users of any given social platform on at least one other platform.

As a result, we offer a variety of other perspectives on social media use within the full report, including:

Potential ad reach
Time spent
Daily open rate
Average number of sessions
Average session duration
People’s "favourite" platforms

You’ll also find our detailed trends for a selection of individual social platforms below.

Messenger’s ad reach evaporates

In the six months since we published our Digital 2026 Global Overview Report, figures reported in Meta’s own planning tools indicate that the potential reach of ads on Messenger has fallen by more than 95 percent.

For context, third-party data from GWI and Similarweb indicates that actual use of Messenger remains relatively strong (more on that below), but the platform’s own ad reach figures have declined dramatically.

When we enquired about this decline, Meta provided us with the following statement:

“Messaging continues to be an increasingly important way for people and businesses to connect, and we’re always looking for ways to strengthen that connection.
As such, we’ve decided to stop delivery to the Messenger inbox ads placement for now. Advertisers running campaigns with the Messenger inbox placement [continued] to have their ads delivered to Messenger inbox through November 11, 2025, at which point delivery to the Messenger inbox placement [stopped] without interruption to active campaigns.
As an alternative, we invite advertisers looking for re-engagement to use marketing messages on Messenger, or still use ads in Messenger Stories via the “Messenger Stories” placement.”

For clarity, at the time of writing, the “Messenger Stories” placement appears to be the only option for advertisers wishing to place ads within the Messenger environment.

And based on the company’s statement, it seems that ads are no longer Meta’s primary commercial focus for Messenger, with the company appearing to switch the platform’s focus to “marketing messages”:

“Building strong, ongoing relationships with customers doesn’t just boost new sales—it’s a key to earning lasting loyalty. Today people often chat with businesses to make purchases or get support. But once their questions are answered or their orders are placed, the conversation often stops there. This leaves businesses with no easy way to follow up or keep interested customers engaged with updates and offers.
To help businesses seamlessly re-engage and retain customers through chat, we’re introducing marketing messages on Messenger. With marketing messages, businesses can initiate promotional messages to people who have subscribed to receive them, and keep that conversation going.”

Meanwhile, the company has also announced that Messenger is no longer available as a desktop app, and the company’s statement also indicates that it is moving Messenger’s web-based interface – currently available at messenger.com – into the Facebook browser experience at facebook.com/messages.

As a result, it appears that Meta is conducting a comprehensive overhaul of Messenger’s positioning within the company’s portfolio, potentially as a result of the launch of WhatsApp ads.

Get the message?

Meta’s planning tools don’t currently report WhatsApp ad reach on a consistent basis across all geographies, but Manochi’s analysis shows that the reported potential reach of ads on WhatsApp already exceeds the reported potential reach of ads on Messenger.

But could this mean that Meta plans to “replace” Messenger ads with WhatsApp ads?

For perspective, our analysis of figures published in Meta’s own tools indicates that Messenger ads continued to reach a healthy audience until the demise of the Messenger Inbox placement, even if there was a consistent decline in those reach figures over the past few years.

More specifically, just before the Messenger Inbox placement disappeared, Meta’s own data indicated that marketers had the potential to reach roughly 942 million users with ads on Messenger.

However, that figure was roughly 14 percent lower than the highest Messenger ad reach value that we saw reported in Meta’s tools, which was 1.09 billion, in October 2021.

But while our analysis of third-party datasets suggests that WhatsApp’s active user base is roughly twice the size of Messenger’s, it would still be surprising to see Meta prioritise ads on WhatsApp over Messenger – not least because of WhatsApp’s original positioning: “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!”.

Indeed, WhatsApp’s co-founder, Jan Koum, even published a post on the WhatsApp blog in 2012 entitled “Why we don’t sell ads”, which is still publicly available at the time of writing.

In that post, Koum made the following statement:

“When [Brian Acton and I] sat down to start our own thing together three years ago, we wanted to make something that wasn’t just another ad clearinghouse… ”

His post goes on to say:

“We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads.
No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they’ll see tomorrow. We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and disappointed about who they didn’t). We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake... and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.”

And perhaps most tellingly, Koum concludes:

“Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought… when advertising is involved, you the user are the product.”
Suffice to say, WhatsApp’s founders weren’t all that keen on ads, so it would be doubly ironic if Meta were to switch the focus of its messaging ad products from Messenger to WhatsApp.

Messenger use declines

However, trends in these two platforms’ user numbers may provide the rationale for such a move.

The latest figures from GWI indicate that active Messenger use has fallen by 10 percent over the past 2 years, from 41.0 percent of online adults in Q4 2023, to 36.9 percent of the same cohort in Q4 2025.

Meanwhile, Similarweb’s App Intelligence data indicates that worldwide use of the Messenger mobile app across Android and iOS phones has fallen by 15 percent over the past two years.

However, both companies’ data shows that WhatsApp use has increased over the past two years, albeit with some fluctuation.

GWI’s data for self-reported use of WhatsApp indicates that adoption increased by 2.6 percent between Q4 2023 and Q4 2025, with the most recent 54.4 percent figure almost 1.5 times higher than Messenger’s current adoption rate of 36.9 percent.

Similarweb’s data tells broadly the same story too, with the company’s App Intelligence data indicating that WhatsApp’s active user base increased by roughly 3 percent between February 2024 and February 2026.

Moreover, Similarweb’s data indicates that WhatsApp’s active user base is already roughly twice the size of Messenger’s declining MAU figure.

So, while WhatsApp’s founders might not be very impressed, there’s a clear commercial rationale for Meta to prioritise the platform’s monetisation.

TikTok’s reported ad reach surges

Figures published in TikTok’s own planning tools indicate that ads on the platform now reach well in excess of 2 billion users aged 18 and above each month.

Moreover, the company’s own data indicate that potential ad reach has jumped by more than 8 percent in just the past three months.

Ad reach vs platform use

However, we were unable to identify similar trends in third-party data for TikTok use.

Indeed, GWI’s research shows that TikTok adoption has remained relatively stable over the past 2 years, and in fact, the number of online adults who report using the platform each month actually decreased in GWI’s latest wave of research.

Meanwhile, Similarweb’s data indicates that active use of TikTok’s various mobile apps actually fell by roughly 10 percent between September 2025 and February 2026, with the monthly active user figure for February 2026 actually lower than the equivalent figure for February 2025.

It’s not unusual to see significant disparities between platform-reported figures for ad reach and third-party figures for platform use though, and there may be various legitimate reasons for these mismatches.

For example, an increase in the number of advertisers buying ads on the platform could potentially increase the number of users who see ads when they open the app.

And because the number of users who were shown ads in the past 30 days plays an important role in shaping the potential reach figures that platforms report, this in turn could be the reason why potential ad reach has increased, even if overall usage figures don’t reflect similar changes.

TikTok vs Instagram

For comparison, the potential reach figures reported by TikTok’s own tools now significantly exceed the Instagram reach figures reported in Meta’s planning tools.

However, marketers may want to consider some additional context before acting on these values.

Firstly, third-party data indicates that Instagram’s active user base is still considerably larger than TikTok’s.

For example, respondents to GWI’s global survey outside of China are almost 1.5 times more likely to say that they use Instagram than they are to say they use TikTok, with Instagram currently maintaining a 47 percent lead over TikTok.

[Side note: Instagram remains blocked in China, while ByteDance offers a separate app – Douyin – in place of TikTok in China.]

Meanwhile, Similarweb’s data echoes GWI’s findings, with the company’s data indicating that – outside of China – Instagram’s mobile apps have 1.3 times as many monthly active users as TikTok’s do.

The India effect

However, there’s a critical consideration that helps explain at least part of these gaps: TikTok remains blocked in India.

For perspective, if we remove both China and India from GWI’s sample, Instagram’s lead falls to just 14 percent, which is considerably lower than the 47 percent we see in the sample that only excludes China.

And likewise, Similarweb’s data suggests that India accounts for roughly 20 percent of Instagram’s total app user base, and without those Indian users, Instagram’s lead over TikTok would shrink to somewhere around 5 percent – significantly lower than the 31 percent we see when we include data for India.

But that raises yet more questions, because – at least in theory – India’s ongoing ban should also affect TikTok’s ad reach numbers, and that doesn’t seem to be the case.

For comparison, based on data reported by each platform’s planning tools, India contributes:

More than 513 million users to Instagram’s reported reach, which is more than 25 percent of Instagram’s global total
More than 400 million users to Facebook’s reported reach, equating to nearly 17 percent of the global total
More than 215 million users to Snapchat’s global total, for a hefty 30 percent of the global total
190 million members to LinkedIn’s reported reach, or 13 percent of the global total

For clarity, TikTok’s planning tools do not report any data for ad reach in India, so the country doesn’t even factor in the platform’s reported global reach figure of 2.2 billion.

So, to ensure we’re comparing like for like, let’s remove India from Instagram’s reported ad reach figures, and focus solely on reach amongst users aged 18 and above.

Those adjustments deliver the following values:

TikTok’s reported ad reach, users aged 18+, not including India: 2.21 billion
Instagram’s reported ad reach, users aged 18+, excluding India: 1.44 billion

In other words, if we remove India, the potential global ad reach figure reported by TikTok’s tools is more than 50 percent higher than the equivalent Instagram figure reported by Meta’s tools.

Given the third-party data we saw above, that’s somewhat surprising.

And it may also be useful to know TikTok’s reported ad reach figures exceed the total adult populations in 35 separate countries, with the reported adult reach figure for Saudi Arabia equivalent to 164 percent of the country’s adults.

It’s essential to highlight that this anomaly isn’t unique to TikTok – indeed, we see similar issues across the ad reach figures reported by most social platforms – but the extent of the “overrun” in TikTok’s reported values tends to be more extreme than those we see for other platforms.

And the key takeaway here is to do your own due diligence, and ensure that you refer to multiple data sources when constructing a media plan.

To help with that, you’ll find a variety of third-party figures for all top social platforms within our full report, together with a more detailed breakdown of the platforms’ own ad reach numbers.

X’s reported ad reach tumbles

Over the past two years, the potential ad reach figures reported in X’s own planning tools have decreased by more than a quarter, from 611 million in April 2024, to just 450 million in April 2026.

At this point, it’s important to highlight that changes in availability mean we’ve had to change the tools that we use to collect X’s ad reach data.

However, we’re still using the company’s own tools to source this data, and we’re still collecting the same data points and metrics.

And reassuringly, our tests indicate that there is no meaningful difference between the values reported by each of these different tools, so we’re confident that this change of tools is not the primary cause of any apparent trends in the data.

However, anomalies in X’s own data are nothing new, so there’s a realistic possibility that we’ll see these figures rebound over the coming months.

Exploring actual X use

And interestingly, third-party data can tell quite a different story to the platform’s own ad reach figures.

For example, GWI’s data for self-reported usage indicates that X usage increased by an impressive 20 percent between Q4 2023 and Q4 2024, but then fell back by 5.7 percent over the past 12 months.

Even after that recent decline though, GWI’s latest value for X adoption is still 13 percent higher than it was this time 2 years ago.

But Similarweb’s data offers yet another perspective.

The company’s App Intelligence product indicates that active use of X’s mobile apps declined by more than 10 percent between February 2024 and February 2026.

And furthermore, Similarweb’s Web Intelligence data shows that unique visitors to x.com in February 2026 were roughly 26 percent lower than unique visitors to twitter.com in February 2024.

Following Threads

It’s been a few months since Meta offered an official figure for Threads use, but App Intelligence data from Similarweb indicates that the Threads mobile app now has more than 1.5 times as many global monthly active users as the X mobile app.

However, while GWI’s data for self-reported usage of the platform shows that active Threads use has more than doubled over the past two years, GWI’s figure for overall Threads adoption still stands at less than half of the equivalent figure for self-reported usage of X.

Moreover, Similarweb’s more granular behavioural data offers valuable perspective on its monthly active user figures.

For example, the company’s intelligence indicates that the typical Threads user spends just 5 minutes per day using the Threads app, compared with the average of 32 minutes per day that X users spend using the X app.

And similarly, 42.4 percent of active X users open the platform’s mobile app each day, compared with 29.9 percent for Threads.

X also enjoys a higher daily sessions figure, and its average of 6.9 sessions per day is roughly 3.6 times higher than the average of 1.9 we see for Threads.

So, while Threads’s user numbers are clearly on the rise, the platform’s engagement rates still have some way to go.

YouTube “co-viewing” on CTV

Alphabet’s own ad reach data indicates that connected TV (CTV) has become YouTube’s second most important device, with nearly 6 in 10 (59 percent) viewers now seeing YouTube ads on these larger screens.

For context, mobile phones still account for the greatest share of YouTube’s audience, with 89.7 percent of the platform’s total ad audience using these devices for at least some of their YouTube activity.

However, YouTube’s data indicates that its CTV audience is now larger than its mobile audience in 22 countries out of 87.

And of particular note here is data for the United States, where YouTube’s CTV viewers now outnumber its mobile viewers.

It’s important to stress that third-party data doesn’t offer any evidence of a dramatic surge in the use of YouTube on connected TVs since our last report, so the source of the recent rise in CTV’s role within the YouTube audience mix is more likely attributable to changes in how YouTube measures CTV audiences.

For reference, the company’s own documentation offers the following statements regarding CTV co-viewing:

“[Research] panels show that multiple people are watching YouTube together on TV screens, a consumer behaviour characteristic of linear television viewership as well.
When multiple people watch YouTube on a connected TV (CTV) device together and view an ad at the same time, it could lead to more impressions and reach for your campaign.
Google measures co-viewing on TV screens using a combination of Google’s connect TV panel data and real-time, census-level surveys… Statistical methods are used to eliminate bias and to make sure that the results accurately represent YouTube’s viewers.”

Pinterest expands ad offering

Pinterest has significantly increased the number of countries that marketers can target using its self-service planning tools.

Over recent weeks, the company has added 38 new countries to its ad planning tools, effectively doubling the number of geographies that marketers can target to 77.

As a result, the platform’s overall figure for potential worldwide ad reach has increased significantly, and now stands close to 579 million.

Meanwhile, figures published in the company’s investor earning reports indicate that monthly active users increased by 3.2 percent in the last three months of 2025, to reach 619 million.

GWI’s data for self-reported usage of Pinterest offers a slightly different take, with overall adoption rates remaining relatively static over the past two years, and even showing a slight dip in the most recent wave of research.

However, Similarweb’s data delivers a more upbeat perspective, with the company’s App Intelligence data pointing to a 20 percent increase in monthly active users of the Pinterest app between February 2024 and February 2026.

Physical stores regaining popularity

The share of online adults who say that they prefer to shop online has declined gently over recent quarters, and now stands at the lowest level we’ve seen since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It’s important to highlight that, at more than 57 percent, internet users remain meaningfully more likely to say that they prefer to shop online versus shopping in physical stores, but the trend back towards physical stores is still worthy of note.

However, it’s also important to stress that online channels remain critical at all stages of the purchase journey, with more than 9 in 10 GWI survey respondents – 90.3 percent – saying that they learn about new products and services via some form of digital media.

For comparison, just over three-quarters of online adults – 76.8 percent – say that offline channels like TV, radio, and out-of-home advertising introduce them to new brands.

However, the most obvious takeaway from this data is that the optimum approach is to use a mix of media – both online and offline.

Online grocery rising

Meanwhile, the number of people who buy their groceries online continues to increase.

GWI’s latest data indicates that 28.7 percent of online adults buy groceries via an online merchant each week, with that figure rising to almost a third – 32.9 percent – amongst women aged 25 to 34.

The popularity of online grocery shopping varies meaningfully by geography though, and internet users in Thailand are more than four times as likely to buy their groceries via online channels as internet users in Italy are.

Older people most likely to research brands online

But let’s return to online’s role in the purchase journey, because – contrary to stereotypes – data indicates that connected retirees are actually the most likely to use the internet to research brands, products, and services.

In GWI’s most recent survey (Q4 2025), 53.8 percent of respondents aged 65 and above said that they typically research potential purchases before buying.

Meanwhile, GWI’s data indicates that the propensity to research potential purchases is considerably lower amongst younger people, with just 44.2 percent of global respondents aged 16 to 24 saying that they conduct online research before buying things.

On a relative basis, these figures indicate that Boomers are more than 20 percent more likely than Gen Z to conduct online research before making a purchase.

But the data by gender also reveal some interesting variations.

For example, amongst the youngest cohort in GWI’s survey, women are roughly 12 percent more likely than their male peers to conduct online research before making a purchase.

However, amongst the oldest respondents, we see this ratio switch, with men aged 65 and above roughly 9 percent more likely than women in the same age group to conduct pre-purchase research online.

For broader perspective, more than half of GWI’s respondents in the 65+ age group – 51.2 percent – say that “researching brands” is one of the primary reasons why they use the internet.

Moreover, “researching brands” ranks fifth amongst the reasons why these older generations use the internet, which is the highest rank position for this activity across all age groups.

Conversely, “researching brands” doesn’t even register in the top 10 motivations amongst internet users age 16 to 24, with this particular activity only cited by 41 percent of GWI’s youngest respondents.

Wrapping up

That concludes our bumper analysis for this report, but remember that you’ll find loads more data in the complete Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update Report, which you’ll find embedded at the top of this article.

If you have any questions about this round of data – or if you’d just like to say hello – you can find me on LinkedIn as Simon Kemp.

Looking ahead, our next scheduled report will be the Digital 2027 Global Overview Report, which we’ll publish in October 2026.

But until then, don’t forget that you’ll find all of our Global Digital Reports from the past 15 years in our (free!) DataReportal library, which also includes local market data for almost every country in the world: https://datareportal.com/library

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.