25+ Social Media Statistics & Facts You Need to Know [2024]

Social media has grown exponentially in recent years. How we interact has gone through a major change after the rise of social media. An unavoidable force, social media has to have a major place in your marketing campaign. Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp play a colossal role in news and information sharing. They connect this world to its core and pave new ways for people to show their talents, preferably known as influencer marketing.

Users can access all kinds of digital information through social media, transforming how information was previously shared. It is extremely easy to talk and see the person living 1000 miles away, making the world a small village. With a vast audience pool available in the footsteps, avoiding the power of social media is unthinkable for a business in 2024. Social media can help you better engage with your audience and increase your market reach and brand awareness.

Breakdown of Social Media Statistics

• Social Media Usage Statistics
• Social Media Statistics Worldwide
• Social Media Advertising Statistics
• Social Media Business Statistics

With many social media features, brands have created consumer communities and gained valuable insights into the reception of their products or services. Social media has been here since 2004, and the numbers say a lot about its colossal spread. Learning about important social media statistics is pivotal, so you can know where your target audience lies. It can also help you identify the key factors affecting your consumers and what you can do to have a wider reach. For your feasibility, we have divided the article into crucial takeaways.

Let’s dive in.

Social Media Usage Statistics

This section has key insights on social media usage statistics and social media user statistics:

1. Social media is one of the most popular activities the digital population is delving into. 2023 had 4.95 billion active social media users worldwide. One of the major reasons that people are online is the mass availability of mobile devices and the internet. Internet costs have decreased in recent years, followed by the availability of smartphones. Two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to come online by 2024.
2. The top-performing social media giants include Meta-owned Facebook, which remains the world’s most widely used platform with 3 billion monthly and 2 billion daily active users. It is imperative to note that active users are individuals who log in at least once a month. Its active user base is larger than the total populations of India and China combined. 67% of Facebook users log in daily (July 2022). For marketers, it is important to have a strong presence on Facebook, looking at the audience it is catering to. Learn more at Facebook Statistics.

3. India has the most active Facebook users, with 315 million users, followed by the United States, with 186 million users. 43.2% of the total Facebook users are female, and the rest are male because, naturally, men are more likely to have interest access than women around the world.
4. YouTube is the second most popular social media giant, with 2.5 billion monthly users and much revenue from its advertising outreach.
5. The third comes the popular messaging application WhatsApp with 2 billion monthly users. It is followed by Instagram with 1.4 billion, WeChat with 1.29 billion, Telegram with 700 Million, and Snapchat with 617 million monthly users.
6. An average user spends at least 19 minutes on YouTube daily, and a whopping 500 hours of videos are uploaded every minute. Google acquired YouTube in 2006 and monetized the platform in 2007 with ads. There are 98 versions of YouTube according to the country you are viewing from.
7. The annual growth rate of social media is estimated to be 4.8%. At this rate, social media is adding 6.8 new users every second. Most social media platforms are available as mobile applications, making downloading and accessing content easier.
8. It can be well said that people are becoming social media addicts. The latest figure shows that individuals spend an average of two and fifty minutes  daily scrolling down social media platforms. A typical YouTube user spends 23.7 hours per month watching videos, followed by Facebook, where users spend 19.6 hours per month.

 

Social Media Statistics Worldwide

This section includes key takeaways on the social media statistics geographically:

9. As home to the world’s largest population, China has the largest number of social media users, with a figure of 1.02 billion. The figure is well-predicted because China has social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo. Western social media platforms’ role is fragmented but still used to some extent. Interestingly, Meta and its family of Apps are blocked in China.
10. India stands second with 755.47 million active users. India has taken great strides as a developing economy, and with the advent of cheap internet, there was no going back. India’s active internet user base is expected to reach 900 million by 2025. The United States of America takes the third spot with 302.25 million, followed by Indonesia with 217.53 million users.

9. As of 2023, Eastern Asia has around 1.2 billion social media population, including countries like China, Hong Kong, Japan, etc. The stride is followed by south Asia, with 961 million social media users.

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Social Media Advertising Statistics

10. With social media’s exponential rise and audience spending hours in it, it is predictable that businesses spend a fortune on catching the attention of their target audience. As of 2023, ad spending on social media is $207 billion. Social media continues to grab the maximum amount of time a user spends online.
11. The United States spends the most on social media advertising.
12. The social media video ad spending is projected at $24.35 billion. Running ads helps brands discover the vast audience waiting to be interacted with. When a platform protects its privacy, 52% of social media users feel incredibly motivated to trust the ads on their feeds.
13. In 2023, $207.1 billion is the total advertisement spending will be on social media. Knowing that brands are expected to shift their ad spending away from more conventional channels is also pivotal. Social media ads are a type of the native ads that is less intrusive and more effective for the businesses.
14. For Meta-owned Instagram, the potential reach of its ads is 1.8 million people. This figure is half of the total Instagram users in 2022. Instagram stories alone are projected to bring in $20.03 million in revenue. 
15. Facebook has garnered $55.1 billion through ads. In the context of the total user base, approximately 67% of it is Facebook’s advertising audience.
16. Meta’s “Family of Apps” including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, are advertising giants.
17. The Ad spending is expected to grow at an annual rate of 3.76%, leading to a projected market volume of US$1.49Billion by 2027.

Did you know more than 100 billion messages are exchanged every day on WhatsApp? Check these WhatsApp Statistics to discover more interesting facts and figures about WhatsApp.

Social Media Business Statistics

18. In a survey, 77% of marketers believed that social media has been crucial to their growth. This means that businesses have been able to grow after leveraging effective social media strategies.  37% feel that COVID-19 has significantly affected their social media use.
19. The top goal for marketers on social media is to advertise their products or services. Most post on their respective channels four to six times a week.
20. The most used format on social media is Short-form videos, with 68% of social media users. The list is followed by user-generated content, live streaming, and live audio chatrooms.
21. In the cadre of influencer marketing, 89% of marketers work with influencers to market their products or services. Influencer marketing is a powerful concept where media influencers and brands collaborate to raise awareness about the said product.
22. The influencer marketing industry is valued at $21.1 billion in 2023. The service offering through influencers has grown by 26%, with 18,900 firms offering influencer marketing services.
23. 64% of the marketers work with micro-influencers (10k-100k followers) to target every minute strata of the audience. This strategy has helped thousands of businesses to achieve growth with the advent of the internet and social media. Only 27% of the respondents are reported to have been working with mega-influencers with more than 1 million followers.
24. One of the few challenges advertisers face is ad-blocker which also saw a 9% increase in use. Currently, 43% of desktop users are using ad-blocking tools to stop getting unwanted ads.
25. Social media users perform various kinds of activities, and 73% of them use it to research more about brands. Individuals scroll down the feed to search for reviews and recommendations on their favourite brands before physically trying them.
26. 25% of marketers feel that funny content is the most sought-after on social media and connects with the Gen-Z audience. Instagram is the most preferred channel for influencer marketing. According to Meta’s annual report, Instagram’s ad reach jumped by 21%, reaching 1.5 million users at the start of 2022.
27. Despite being banned in larger economies like India, Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil, TikTok continues to grow quickly. By the start of 2022, TikTok’s ad reach is expected to reach roughly 885 million users.
28. 89% of marketers love using Facebook, and the most effective channel for B2B marketers is LinkedIn.
29. The global social media penetration rate is 59.4%

An interesting fact: One out of ten Twitter accounts is probably a bot. One research suggests that 9% to 15% of Twitter accounts are bots! Astonished? Read these artificial intelligence statistics to know more about the prominence of AI & bots.

Conclusion

Which of these social media statistics amazed you?

Being aware of the latest social media aspects is important while creating your marketing strategy. With these notes, you can decide where to shift your marketing focus or where to double the spending. It all comes down to the needs of the business, and you must review these statistics closely before jumping to make a marketing outline.

Sources: Datareportal¹, Datareportal², Meta 2022 Q2 Results, Datareportal³, Omnicoreagency, YouTube Press, Data.ai, Statista¹, Statista², Statista³, InsiderIntelligence, Hootsuite, Hootsuite Blog, Meta 2021 Q4 Results, HubSpot¹, HubSpot², Statisita⁴, Influencer Marketing Hub, Arxiv