Social media and the rise of social networks have changed the way we interact on the Internet and have created a culture that is both rich with opportunity and rife with risks. One thing is clear. Social media isn’t just a fad as many had claimed it was going to end up like.

As technology evolves, social media becomes an increasingly valuable marketing tool. Many businesses now use social media as part of their overall marketing strategy and so do individuals trying to get themselves and their product attention. The importance and the usage of social media both keep increasing every passing year. Let’s take a look at the latest key social media statistics that you should know about.

User Statistics

• The global population currently stands at a mark of 7.92 billion. Out of these, 5.31 billion people are unique mobile phone users and make up for more than 67% of the entire population. The number of total internet users stands at 4.95 billion people, a whopping 62.5% of the global population. And more importantly, 4.62 billion out of these internet users are active on one or another social media platform. 93.4% of total internet users are now on social media.
• The number of social media users was 4.55 billion in October 2021 and the increment in such a short term is definitely impressive.  Back then, 57.6% of the global population was using social media and it has gone up to 58.4% already. 
• 424 million new internet users joined social media networks in the year 2021. That equals 1 million new users every day for a whole year. Going deeper into it, more than 13 new users joined social media every second of the year which is mind-blowing.
• Social media has seen an increment of 77 million users in just the last quarter. A 1.7% boost in user terms came during this time period.

Random Statistics

• According to Stats, a social media user spends an average amount of 2 hours and 27 minutes per day on social media. It has gone up by 2 minutes from last year’s 2 hours 25 minutes with a 1.4% increment.
• There are more social media platforms now than ever before but certain platforms dominate over the rest in the terms of usage. On average, 7.5 platforms are used dominantly per month which is a significant increase from 6.7 in 2021.
• The figure of social media usage has gone up by more than 3 times in this past decade. In 2012, only 1.48 billion people were a part of the virtual world. 
• Whatsapp has overtaken Facebook as the favorite social media platform of the world. Statistically speaking, Whatsapp holds a 15.7% share of the global social media user base. Facebook has also slipped past second place after dropping behind Instagram. With 14.8%, Instagram has a slight edge over Facebook (14.3%). Interestingly enough, all three of these platforms belong to Meta right now.  
• Despite not being the most favorite, Facebook still has the most number of users worldwide in 2022. The latest official figures of Facebook reveal the number to be 2.91 billion users. 
• WeChat is the 5th most popular social media platform in 2022. More than 99% of WeChat users are from mainland China which makes this stat mind-blowing. 
• Whatsapp tops the list of platforms with the most amount of unique users. For 1.5% of the total social media users, Whatsapp is the only platform they use.

Usage Statistics

• A report has projected the expected number of hours of social media usage in 2022 to be over 4 trillion hours. 
• An Android mobile phone user spends 23.7 hours per month streaming videos on YouTube, the most for any other social media platform. Facebook and TikTok are tied on the second spot with 19.6 hours each. The third spot goes to Whatsapp with 18.6 hours.
• The coronavirus pandemic confined people to just their homes and work-from-home has been the way to go for a while now. 2022 stats show that 1 in every 4 internet users are using social media for work. With a massive 41.5%, Kenya has the most number of people using social media for school or jobs. 
• Data suggests that more than 98.5% of social media users are active on more than one platform in 2022.
• Social media applications are some of the most downloaded apps as we move into 2022 with TikTok leading the list upfront.

Demographic Statistics

• Most of the userbase of popular social media platforms belongs to the 13+ demographic in terms of age. Taking out the population that falls under that line makes these social media stats even crazier. More than 74.8% of the world’s older-than-13 population is active on social media platforms today. 
• Studies show that males slightly dominate social media usage over females. 53.9% of total global users identify as male and 46.1% as female. 
• TikTok is the most popular platform among 16-25-year-old women who make up 16.4% of the platform’s all users. Facebook leads the charge in the 25-34 age demographic with 25.7%. Whatsapp remains the favorite of the elderly that are between 30 to 49 years old. 
• The adult demographic of 18-34-year-old social media users is the most interested in brands. 95% of them are already following at least one brand.

Business Statistics

• Social media has become a big deal when it comes to marketing and advertising which is also reflected in statistics. 27.6% of internet users discover new brands and products through social media now. 
• Social media ads saw a big rise in total spending between 2021 to early 2022. It now makes up for 33.1% of the total digital advertising expenditure globally. A total of $154 billion were spent on social media ads in one year.
• Social media is the go-to for small and mid-sized businesses in 2022. 71% of such businesses and brands are active on one or more platforms and 52% of them are publishing new content daily. 
• Delving more into the customer side, 63% of brand consumers prefer social media to be their medium of customer service and support.
• Here’s another stat that should interest a marketer or a brand. 23.3% of global internet users follow at least one brand on social media. Only 12.2% of users, however, share content posted by a brand at least once every month.
• Nearly 200 million social media users are clicking on at least one brand profile every day on average.

Engagement Statistics

• Facebook is the platform with the best engagement rates when it comes to the content of brands and businesses.
• Shopping-related posts on social media are doing well in the new decade. Every month, over 130 million users interact with such posts.
• Short video format brings the most engagement as concluded by a study on digital marketers. 85% of marketers believe short videos get them the best results based on their own analytics and insights.

Ads Insights

• Social media ads might be doing better than ever but the audience feels they do not relate to the ads that they come across. Only 17.3% of social media users find themselves represented in ads across all platforms.
• The average cost per every 1,000 impressions has increased significantly since the third quarter of 2021. The rate went up by 21.7% as now an average user has to pay $9.13 as compared to 2021’s $7.56.
• Social media still remains insignificant in terms of diverting traffic to major websites. Out of the top 20 most popular websites globally, none receives more than 5% of its traffic through social media.  

Misc. Statistics 

• Other than marketing or discovering brands, social media is increasingly becoming a source of news for the masses. 36.5% of the world’s internet users use social media for reading news.
• Communicating with friends and family still stays one of the major reasons for a majority of social media users. 33% of users access one or more platforms for this very purpose.
• While it might be a random statistic, dogs are the social media favorites at present. On Instagram, there are 330 million posts with the hashtag “dog”. TikTok videos with this tag have garnered over 205 billion views as well. On Twitter, more than 390 million users are interested in the topic “dogs”. 

Now let’s get a bit more detailed and take a look at platform-specific social media statistics of some of the biggest social networking platforms today. 

Facebook Statistics

• Facebook continues to be having the most number of users in 2021-22. The Meta-owned platform hosts 2.910 billion users per month on average. That equals to 36.9% of the global population. India has more than 329 million active Facebook users, more than any other country.
• Not all of these users are unique as 16% of all Facebook accounts are fake or duplicates. 
• 66% of Facebook’s users log in on the platform at least once daily.
• 56.5% of the Facebook users are male, leaving a 43.5% portion of females.
• A massive amount of 98.5% of FB users uses mobile devices to access the platform. 81.8% out of these are exclusive to mobile-only while the rest 16.7% use both mobile and desktop devices.
• Facebook Ads have a potential reach of up to 2.11 billion accounts according to the latest statistics. 
• The average engagement rate of a Facebook page post is 0.7%. Photos or videos get an engagement rate boost and reach up to 0.11%. Page status posts get the highest rate of 0.13%. Posts with links only bring 0.3% engagement, the lowest for any kind of post.
• Facebook Marketplace ads have a potential reach of 562 million users and make up for 26.6% of the entire ad reach.   

WhatsApp Statistics

• Whatsapp now has more than 2 billion users who exchange over 100 billion texts every single day. It is the most used messaging platform globally ahead of Facebook Messenger and WeChat. More than 100 million calls are made on WhatsApp every day as well.
• A majority of 73% of WhatsApp users are on Android and only 27% use iOs. WhatsApp is the second-most used mobile app globally with Facebook being on the top. An average user spends 19.4 hours on WhatsApp monthly. 
• WhatsApp was downloaded more than 600 million times in 2021 and is used in 180 countries. It is the most downloaded and used messaging app in 155 of these countries across the globe.
• WhatsApp Business has more than 100 million downloads and more than 175 million WhatsApp users interact with a Business account every day at least once.
• The COVID-19 pandemic brought a 40% increase in usage for WhatsApp. In the lockdowns all over the world, 2 billion minutes of calls were made every single day. 
• WhatsApp is the most popular among older people who are aged between 30 to 49. 30% of its users belong to this demographic. 

Instagram Statistics

• Instagram has at least 1.5 billion users all over the world today. India has the most number of Instagram users with 201 million. 23.9% of the world’s people aged 13+ are currently active Instagram followers.
• Instagram’s advertising service can potentially reach more than 1.478 billion people now which is 257 million more than 2020-21. With a 21% increase, Instagram’s ad reach is growing at a rate faster than Facebook’s.
• 51.6% of Instagram’s total global users are male. A majority of Instagram users are aged from 25 to 34. 
• The overall Instagram engagement rate is 1.94% which is significantly higher than most of the other platforms. 
• 90% of accounts on Instagram are currently following at least one brand or business profile. In fact, 83% of users use Instagram to explore new products and make shopping decisions. 
• Instagram is the top choice of 73% of digital marketers when it comes to influencer marketing. 
• More than 100 million Instagram users either host or watch live sessions daily on the platform. 
• On average, an Instagram user spends 11.2 hours on the platform every month.
• Instagram is the fastest-growing social media platform with over 21% growth within the last twelve months.
• For more Instagram Statistics then click here on this link

Twitter Statistics

• Twitter is the 15th most active social media platform in the world today with over 436 million active users. 56.4% of these are males and only 43.6% are females.
• Twitter’s user base consists of over 5.5% of the entire population of the world. Considering only the people aged above 13, the number goes up to 7.1%.
• Twitter is one of the most influential and mainstream social media platforms. As of now, 83% of the world’s politicians and leaders have active accounts on Twitter. 
• Out of all Twitter users, 42% log in and interact on the platform daily. 
• The USA has the most number of Twitter users with 77.8 million.
• Tweets with hashtags have 100% better engagement rates than those without them. Using one or two maximum hashtags in a tweet increases engagement by 21%. Tweets with more tags have shown 17% fewer engagement rates.
• Twitter ads do better without hashtags on the other hand. Such ads experience a 23% better engagement than usual.
• For more Twitter Statistics then click here on this link

TikTok Statistics

• TikTok passed the 1 billion monthly user mark in September of 2021, as announced by the company itself. It is the 7th most active social network in 2022. Around 650k new users are joining TikTok every day on average.
• TikTok’s ad reach will stretch up to 885 million in 2022 and is growing significantly faster than Facebook. It has gone up by 7.3% when compared to last year. 
• TikTok is one of the few social media platforms where female users dominate. 57% of TikTok’s users identify as female. 
• The average age of the TikTok user base lies between the range of 18 to 24 making it the most popular platform among teenagers. 
• TikTok has been banned in India and as a result, the USA has the most TikTok users with 131 million of them. 
• For more TikTok Statistics then click here on this link

YouTube Statistics

• More than 2.56 billion people globally use YouTube according to the latest reports. It is one of the most active social platforms and the second-largest search engine on the internet.
• YouTube’s ad reach went up to 2.5 billion by the end of 2021 which was 271 million more than the previous year.
• Music dominates YouTube’s most searched terms of recent time. ‘Song’. ‘Songs’ and ‘New Songs’ are among the 5 most searched keywords on YouTube.
• With over 467 million users, India comes out on top again in the list of countries with the most YouTube users. 
• 44% of digital marketers are projected to use YouTube for the first time this year.
• More than a billion hours worth of content is watched on YouTube every day.
• Most of YouTube’s watch time comes from mobile devices, making up for 70% of the total.
• T-Series is the most subscribed and most viewed channel on YouTube in 2022 with over 200 million subs and 176 billion views. “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong is the most viewed video ever with over 10 billion views.

Twitch Statistics

• 260 billion minutes of video streams have been consumed already in 2022 which is 4.7% up from the data at this of the year in 2021. 
• 8.5 million content creators stream videos every month on average. The data also shows that around 102,400 streamers are live on Twitch every given moment in 2022. Monthly, it goes up to more than 8.5 million streamers. 
• The number of concurrent viewers in 2022 so far is 2.8M on average which is an improvement over last year’s 2.78M.
• Ninja is the most subscribed Twitch streamer with more than 17 million followers. 
• Nearly 23.5k video games were streamed within the previous week. ‘Elden Ring’ is the most viewed game on Twitch in these past 7 days with over 74 million hours of watch time.
• For more Twitch Statistics then click here on this link

Snapchat Statistics

• There are more than 319 million daily users of Snapchat all over the world. Snapchat is the 12th most used social media platform currently. Nearly 6.8% of the world’s population is on Snapchat at present.
• Snapchat’s advertising service reach has gone up to 557 million recently. 
• The daily user numbers have gone up by nearly 25% since 2020 with a 70+ million increase. 
• 126 million Snapchat users come from India, the most from any other country.
• Snapchat is another instance where female users are the majority with 53.8%. 
• For more Snapchat Statistics then click here on this link

Reddit Statistics

• Reddit is one of the most active social media platforms of recent times with more than 430 million monthly users and 52 million daily visitors.
• External links are the most prevalent on Reddit and make up for more than 50% of the entire content. 
• Reddit posts get an average of 50 billion views every month. 
• An average Reddit user spends around 10 minutes and 23 seconds surfing across the platform. 
• There are more than 2.5 million subreddits currently on Reddit. 11 million posts are submitted in these subreddits every month. 
• Posts with 60-80 characters in their titles get the best engagement and bring the most upvotes. Titles with more than 120 and less than 20 characters perform the wort. 
• There are over 2.2 billion subreddits in the existence of which 130K are considered to be active.  

LinkedIn Statistics

• LinkedIn has more than 800 million active users across the world. 
• Marketers can reach over 790 million users with ads on LinkedIn which is 22 million more than the last year. 
• LinkedIn leads the race in terms of driving traffic to a company or brand’s website with an impressive 46%.
• Around 45 million people look up various jobs on LinkedIn every week. Every passing second, 77 new job applications are uploaded which means 200 million of them in a month. 
• Statistically, 4 people on average get hired every minute on LinkedIn. 
• Moving on to demographics, 56.6% of total LinkedIn users are male. LinkedIn is the most popular among the age group of 25 to 34.
• The United States of America is the country with the most number of LinkedIn users (180 million).

Pinterest Statistics

• Pinterest is placed 14th on the list of the most active social media platforms. This is despite the significant decrease of users the platform faced in 2021. Pinterest lost around 10 million users within three months in 2021. Currently, Pinterest has 478 million monthly users.
• Pinterest is more popular among women who make up more than 70% of their entire user base. 
• Pinterest is used by 90.5 million people in the USA, which is the highest for any country. Brazil comes second with 30.7 million users.
• There are more than 5 billion pinboards on Pinterest currently. 
• A total of 240 billion pins have been saved by Pinterest across the years of the platform’s existence. 
• 25% of social media marketers use Pinterest today. 
• 90% of the users that are active weekly make their shopping decisions based on the pins they come across. 
• 77% of such users have discovered one or more new brands through Pinterest. 
• For more Pinterest Statistics then click here on this link

Conclusion

It does not take a genius to figure out that social media is here to stay. It used to be looked upon as a temporary trend that will go away but we all know how it turned out to be. These stats prove how not only do many platforms keep getting bigger but also how they are affecting our surroundings. From marketing to various researches, social media statistics can be very helpful.

But finding these social media statistics takes time. The latest and only the most accurate stats from reliable sources and studies are compiled together here to make it easier for you.