Turn the clock back just 20 years and the term "social
media" was just making its way into our day-to-day language. Now, social media
has become an integral part of our lives. We use it to stay connected with
friends, find jobs, meet people, get the news, and pretty much anything in
between.
If we had to guess which social media site is the most
popular, most of us would correctly pick Facebook. It has been around as long if
not longer than any other site, and has become the go-to social media platform
for most people around the world.
But what other sites are popular? It's a big world out
there, and everyone uses social media a bit differently. Let's do a deep-dive
into the many different social media sites to find out which ones are the most
popular both in the United States and the rest of the world.
Social
Media Users Around the World in 2020
The landscape of social media has remained relatively the
same since 2019. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are still the elite, while
Snapchat and Twitter are starting to slip.
There are also some newcomers to the scene, mainly Tik
Tok, which has rapidly become one of the most popular social media sites in the
world.
However, while the players in the game might be changing, one fact remains in 2020: people continue to love the internet and social media.
According to Internet
World Stats, there are about 4.54 billion people connected to the
internet around the world, which is just a touch under 59 percent of the entire
global population.
But what about social media? As we would expect, social media use has been growing. Statista has been tracking this number over time. Here are some numbers for you to think over:
The Most
Popular Social Media Sites By Number of Users
Okay, so now that we have it clear that social media is a
huge part of people's lives all around the world, let's get into which sites
are the most popular.
Some of the numbers won't surprise you, but others will. This data is from Statista:
Facebook and YouTube being near the top of the list should
shock no one, and it's also not surprising they are getting more popular.
Instagram is also on the rise, with it now having more than one billion users.
Another interesting trend in 2020 is that Chinese sites
are getting increasingly popular. This shouldn't be too much of a shock - China's massive population is getting more and more digital, and they don't
have access to other sites such as Facebook and Instagram.
However, for users in the United States, that WhatsApp is
so popular around the world might be a bit of a surprise. If you've ever had
the chance to travel to Europe, then you will know that most people use
WhatsApp in place of SMS messaging, which can help to explain why it's so
popular worldwide.
The
Facebook Family
We must never forget that Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are all part of the Facebook family of apps. Together, they represent a huge portion of the world's total social media users:
However, part of the reason these numbers appear so
dramatic is that many people have more than one account with Facebook.
For example, you can't have a Messenger account without
first having Facebook. Nevertheless, these numbers help to show just how
prominently Facebook features in our social media lives.
The Most
Popular Social Media Sites By Time Spent on Site
Looking at the number of users on each social media site
is a good way to figure out which platform is most popular, but another good
measure is the amount of time we spend on Facebook vs. Instagram vs. YouTube,
and so on. On some platforms, people
simply log in, check something quickly and then leave, but on others, they
scroll through the feed for hours. Many of us likely know what this is like.
On average, people spend 142, or 2 hours and 22 minutes per day. However, this average is global, and some people use it much more than others. Here's a breakdown of daily social media use around the world:
As you can see, Latin America and Africa are well above the average, whereas Europe, North America, and Asia are below. Part of this could be because internet use in Latin America and Africa is growing, and social media and internet use is restricted to most people in China.
The Most
Popular Social Media Sites By Frequency of Use
Another way to measure the most popular social media sites is to look at how often people use it. The Pew Research Center collected some of this data, which you can see below:
Some Stats
About the Most Popular Social Media Sites
Depending on how we measure it, the same social media
sites come up as being the most popular. Facebook clearly stands on top,
especially when you consider that Instagram and WhatsApp are also part of
Facebook.
But to demonstrate just how popular these sites are,
consider the following stats about each one:
Facebook
·
Each time someone visits Facebook, they spend an
average of 10-12 minutes on the site. [We Are Social]
·
88 percent of all Facebook users access the site
from a mobile device. [Hootsuite]
·
Facebook's revenue per user has doubled in the
past three years. [Kleiner Perkins]
·
Overall, 74 percent of all Facebook users go on
the site at least once a day. [Pew]
Instagram
·
Over a billion people use Instagram, but 80
percent of users are from outside the U.S. [Statista]
·
72 percent of teens use Instagram daily. [Business Insider]
·
Instagram users "like" 4.2 billion posts a day. [Time]
·
There are 95 million new posts each day. [Reuters]
·
63 percent of Instagram users use the site daily. [Pew}
Twitter
·
500 million tweets are sent each day. [Twitter]
·
Twitter became profitable for the first time in
2017. [Recode]
·
User growth shrunk from 2018-2019, suggesting
the platform may be in decline. [eMarketing]
·
71 percent of users are reading the news on
Twitter. [journalism.org]
·
Just 42 percent of Twitter users use the site
every day. [Pew}
WhatsApp
·
65 billion WhatsApp messages are sent each day. [Business Insider]
·
WhatsApp is used in 180 countries around the
world. [WhatsApp]
·
WhatsApp has 1.6 billion daily active users. [Tech Crunch]
·
There are 100 million voice calls made each day
on WhatsApp. [WhatsApp]
YouTube
·
YouTube is the world's second-largest search
engine, behind only Google, which belongs to the same company as YouTube. [Pulse Marketing]
·
The average mobile session is 40 minutes. [YouTube]
·
There are over 1 billion mobile videos viewed
each day. [Statistic Brain]
Snapchat
·
73 percent of all Americans aged 18-24 use
Snapchat, down from 78 percent a year ago. [Pew]
·
47 percent of U.S. teens think it's better than
Facebook. [Fool]
·
66 percent of all Snapchat users are under the
age of 25. [Hootsuite]
The Most
Popular Social Media Sites You've Never Heard Of
Looking at the list of the most popular social media
sites, we see many of the ones we're most familiar with.
Just a year ago, in 2019, Tik Tok used to be an unknown,
but it's become a sensation, at least amongst US youth. It was actually one of the most downloaded
apps in the United States
not too long ago.
But there are quite a few most of us have probably never
heard of. For example, what's QZone?
It
turns out, many of the world's most popular social media sites are specific to
China.
1.
China has severe restrictions on internet use.
Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are not allowed to operate there.
2.
China has the world's largest population, and
this population is getting more and more affluent by the minute, meaning they
have more time and money to access the internet and social media.
It's hard to say if these sites will take over Facebook and
YouTube as the world's most popular sites, but as long China maintains its
strict regulations, these platforms likely aren't going anywhere.
Here's a little more information about these hugely
popular social media sites that are relatively unknown in other parts of the
world.
WeChat
WeChat is very similar to other messaging apps, such as
WhatsApp or LINE, but it's almost exclusively used in China, where Facebook,
and its family of apps, is not allowed to operate.
However, because China's population is so large, and
because so many people use WeChat, it's made the top of the list of most
popular social media sites.
Here are some more stats to know about WeChat:
·
It was first released in January 2011, making it
one of the newer social media platforms around the world.
·
There are 1.058 billion WeChat users, and 902
million of them are active on a daily basis. [Tech Node]
·
Each day there are around 38 billion messages
sent over the WeChat platforms. [Tencent]
·
Of the 1.058 billion users on WeChat, just 70
million live somewhere other than China. [Business Insider]
·
98.5 percent of Chinese people aged 50-80 use
WeChat. [Tech Node]
QZone
QZone, which is also owned by Tencent, the same company
that owns WeChat, is considered by some to be China's most popular social media
site.
This is largely because QZone operates more like Facebook.
It allows you to write blogs, keep diaries, send photos, listen to music, and
more. This is different from WeChat and QQ, which are almost exclusively
messaging services.
Currently, there are just over 548 million monthly active QZone
users, 542 million of which are mobile users.
QQ
Yet another Chinese social media site, QQ is WeChat's
biggest competitor. It's an instant messaging service that also allows people
to pay for goods at participating stores and restaurants.
We don't know much about QQ in terms of usage, but we do
know that it's growing quite quickly.
To give you an idea, consider that right now there are
over 800 million users on QQ. However, in 2014, there were just 200 million
users.
Interestingly, QQ is owned by Tencent, the same parent
company as WeChat and QZone.
Douyin/Tik
Tok
Tik Tok (or Douyin in China) used to be known as
musical.ly. It functions similar to YouTube in that it is primarily a video
sharing service.
As musical.ly, it officially launched in 2014, but it
rebranded as Tik Tok in 2016. Tik Tok's target audience is in China, although
it has a significant amount of users worldwide.
Some stats to consider:
·
Tik Tok now has more than 500 million active
users, making it one of the most popular social media sites in the world.
·
There are about 13 million new videos uploaded
to muscial.ly every day. [Sensor
Tower]
·
42 percent of Tik Tok's monthly revenue comes
from the U.S. [Sensor Tower]
·
14 percent of young adult internet users in the
US are on Tik Tok. [Forbes]
·
28.56 percent of Tik Tok users open the app at
least once a day. [eMarkerter]
Sina Weibo
Often referred to as the "Chinese Twitter," the social
media site Sina Weibo, which is commonly referred to as just Weibo, is rapidly
becoming one of the most widely-used social media sites in the world.
Here are some stats about this relatively unknown social
media site:
·
Currently, Weibo has around 430 million
registered users.
·
It has around 195 million daily active users
·
In 2017, Weibo pulled in $1.15 billion in
revenue.
VK
Formerly
known as Vkontakte, VK is the most popular social media site in Russia, making
it the only unknown social media site that's not specific to China.
Because of
Russia's smaller population and VK's limited reach outside of Russia, it's not
a major player on the world stage. It only has around 80 million monthly active
users, which is no small number, but it pales in comparison to many of the
other social media sites currently in use around the world.
Conclusion
Social media use around the world remains immensely
popular, and these statistics show that most people spend the majority of their
social media time on only a handful of sites.
However, if the last 20 years have taught us anything,
it's that there will surely be new sites for people to use. It will quite
interesting to see, though, if any of these upstarts can eat away at the
massive popularity of those that we currently use most frequently.
