Global social media Stats
Our latest data show that there are 4.48 billion social media users around the world in July 2021, equating to almost 57 percent of the total global population.
These figures suggest that more than 9 in 10 internet users now use social media each month (learn more about their broader internet behaviours on our Global Digital Overview page).
Social media user numbers have surged in the past 12 months too, with 520 million new users joining social media in the year to July 2021.
That equates to annualised growth of 13.1 percent, or an average 16½ new users every single second.
It’s also worth noting that comparisons of social media users to total population may under-represent the full extent of social media use, because most social media companies restrict use of their platforms to people aged 13 and above.
For context, the latest data suggest that the number of social media users around the world now equates to more than 70 percent of the eligible global population.
The typical user actively uses or visits an average of 6.6 different social media platforms each month, and spends an average of close to 2½ hours using social media each day.
Assuming that people sleep for between 7 and 8 hours per day, these latest figures suggest that people spend roughly 15 percent of their waking lives using social media.
Added together, the world spends more than 10 billion hours using social platforms each day, which is the equivalent of nearly 1.2 million years of human existence.
Facebook remains the world’s most widely used social media platform, but there are now six social media platforms that claim more than one billion monthly active users each. Four of these six platforms are owned by Facebook.
Based on publicly available data up to 18 July 2021, at least 17 social media platforms have 300 million or more monthly active users*:
- Facebook has 2.853 billion monthly active users.
- YouTube’s potential advertising reach is 2.291 billion.(a)
- WhatsApp has at least 2 billion monthly active users.
- Instagram’s potential advertising reach is 1.386 billion.(a)
- Facebook Messenger has around 1.3 billion monthly active users.(b)
- WeChat (inc. Weixin 微信) has 1.242 billion monthly active users.
- TikTok has at least 732 million monthly active users.
- QQ (腾讯QQ) has 606 million monthly active users.
- Douyin (抖音) has 600 million daily active users (note: monthly active users may be higher).
- Telegram has 550 million monthly active users.
- Sina Weibo has 530 million monthly active users.
- Snapchat’s potential advertising reach is 514 million.(a)
- Kuaishou (快手) has 481 million monthly active users.
- Pinterest has 478 million monthly active users.
- Reddit has around 430 million monthly active users.(b)
- Twitter’s potential advertising reach is roughly 397 million.(a)
- Quora has around 300 million monthly active users.(b)
Social media platform preferences vary from one country to another though, so it’s important to dig deeper into the data to understand what’s happening at a local level.
If you’d like to know more about social media use in individual countries, including local social media platform rankings and audience profiles by age and gender, take a look at our complete collection of local reports.
And if you’d like to stay up to date with all the latest developments in social media use around the world, sign up for our newsletter using the form below to receive notifications whenever we publish new reports.
Notes:
(a) Where platforms only publish daily active user figures, or where platforms have not published recent updates to monthly active users, we've used the latest advertising reach figures published in each platform’s respective self-service advertising tools, in order to provide a more equal basis for comparison.
(b) These platforms have not published updated user figures in the past 12 months, so the user figures published here may not be as reliable as the user figures we’ve included for other platforms in this list.
LinkedIn no longer publishes monthly active user figures, and its monthly advertising audience reach figures are based on total registered members, not monthly active users (MAUs). As a result, it’s difficult to identify how many active users LinkedIn has each month. However, our calculations indicate that the platform likely has an insufficient number of MAUs to qualify for the ranking above.
* Note that we report both monthly active user figures and potential advertising reach figures for various social media platforms in our reports. Please read each slide carefully to understand which metrics we’ve used for each platform.