Which of the following was ranked by the text as the most popular social networking website

Analysis from Kepios shows that there are 4.70 billion social media users around the world in July 2022, equating to 59.0 percent of the total global population.

Social media user numbers have continued to grow over the past 12 months too, with 227 million new users joining social media since this time last year.

That equates to annualised growth of 5.1 percent, at an average rate of more than 7 new users every single second.

The latest figures indicate that well over 9 in 10 internet users now use social media each month (learn more about people’s broader internet behaviours on our Global Digital Overview page).

However, note that figures for social media users may not represent unique individuals, and due to issues like duplicate accounts, social media user figures may exceed the figures that we publish for internet users – or even for total population.

On the other hand, it’s also worth noting that comparing social media users with figures for 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 75 percent of the eligible global population.

Data from GWI reveals that the typical social media user actively uses or visits an average of 7.4 different social platforms each month, and spends an average of close to 2½ hours per day using social media. 

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.

World's Most-Used Social Media Platforms July 2022 DataReportal

These individual platform user numbers tell a compelling story about the rise of social media around the world, but – on their own – they don’t tell the whole story.

Critically, the world’s connected population makes use of a variety of different social platforms each month, which means that there will be considerable overlaps between the user bases and advertising audiences of each of these platforms.

The chart below shows the extent of these overlaps, with fresh data from GWI providing valuable insights for anyone looking to build a social media ‘mix’ or digital marketing plan.

Social Media Platform Audience Overlaps July 2022 DataReportal

The key takeaway from this great data is that marketers don’t need to be on all platforms at the same time in order to reach the majority of their audiences.

Indeed, if reach is your primary objective, you can focus on just one or two of the larger platforms, safe in the knowledge that you’ll already have the potential to reach the majority of social media users.

Reach isn’t the only thing you should consider when building a marketing plan of course, but this data also allows us to think differently about how we construct a social media platform mix.

For example, different people will use different platforms for different needs, and it’s well worth marketers exploring these needs to identify which platforms are best suited to individual campaign and activity objectives.

The chart below offers some great insight into the reasons why people use social media today, but remember that these motivations will differ by country, by age group, and by platform, so be sure to dig into our local market data too.

World's Favourite Social Media Platforms July 2022 DataReportal

As you might expect though, these preferences vary considerably by age and by gender.

As you can see in the chart below, GWI’s research finds that younger people are more likely to say that Instagram is their “favourite” social media platform (at least in most Western markets), whereas older generations tend to prefer Facebook and WhatsApp.

However, there are important differences in these preferences at a country level, and those local nuances are particularly important for marketers who are hoping to reach the right audience in the right place at just the right time.

Favourite Social Media Platforms by Age and Gender July 2022 DataReportal

Research also reveals that people visit different social media platforms to achieve different things.

GWI’s survey reveals that messaging friends and family is a particularly popular topic on Facebook, but that TikTok users aren’t really all that interested in this functionality.

Instead, TikTok users primarily visit the platform to look for funny and entertaining videos.

Meanwhile, users on Instagram and Snapchat are particularly interested in publishing their own content, but this activity is significantly less popular on TikTok, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

And marketers may like to know that Pinterest users are particularly interested in following or researching brand-related content on the world’s most popular online pinboard.

User Activities by Social Media Platform July 2022 DataReportal

Social media preferences and behaviours also vary meaningfully from one country to another, 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.

We also have dedicated pages exploring the latest statistics for a number of the world’s top social platforms, which you can explore via the links below:

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.

(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.

(c) Based on data published by iiMedia Polaris.

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.