Social Media Statistics: Users, Platforms, Money and Rules in One Place

How many people use social media in 2026?

This page is the starting point for social media data on BusinessStats. It brings together the headline numbers from the original publishers: Kepios for global adoption, the platforms themselves for their user counts, company filings for revenue, WARC for advertising spend, Pew Research Center for usage in the United States, and the regulators who now set the rules. Each section summarises one topic and links to the deeper page where we cover it in full, such as the number of social media users worldwide from 2015 to today or the social media penetration rate in 67 countries.

5.81 billion user identities, or seven in ten people on Earth

Kepios, the research company behind the DataReportal reports, publishes the most widely used estimate of social media adoption. It bases the figure on audience data from the platforms and other sources, and it counts user identities rather than unique people. In its Digital 2027 Global Overview Report, released on 21 October 2026 with data for the start of October, it counted 5.81 billion active social media user identities. That equals 69.9 percent of a world population of 8.32 billion and, by our calculation, about 94.5 percent of the 6.15 billion people who use the internet.

The long run shows how quickly social media became near universal among internet users. In October 2015 Kepios put the total at just under 2.27 billion, or 30.3 percent of the world population. By January 2022 it had reached 4.62 billion (58.4 percent) and by January 2024 it stood at 5.04 billion (62.3 percent). The Digital 2025 report put it at 5.24 billion in early 2025. In October 2025 Kepios reported 5.66 billion, a jump that partly reflects a rebasing of figures for China after the national internet authority revised its own data, so the step between early and late 2025 should not be read as pure growth.

Growth has flattened: identities rose about 2.5 times between October 2015 and October 2025, but added only 20 million between April and October 2026.

The flattening in 2026 is the most important change in the data this year. Kepios reported an increase of 151 million identities, or 2.7 percent, in the twelve months to October 2026, compared with 259 million, or 4.8 percent, in the twelve months to October 2025. The mid-year update had already shown 5.79 billion identities in April 2026, so the second half of the year added only about 20 million. Kepios explains part of the slowdown by account purges at Meta, which reduced the reach figures that Facebook and Instagram report to advertisers in several countries, and it expects global adoption to pass 70 percent in early 2027 if no further purges occur. Our page on social media year on year growth tracks this deceleration in detail.

Source: Kepios, DataReportal Digital 2027 Global Overview Report, 21 October 2026. Mobile users are unique individuals using a mobile phone. The share of internet users (94.5 percent) is a BusinessStats calculation.

Adoption is very uneven between countries. Social media identities exceed the resident population in the Gulf states, where migrant workers and second accounts inflate the count, while rates are in single digits in parts of Africa. Our ranking of social media penetration by country sets out the country rates, and the regional totals are covered on the page about social media users by world region.

Why 5.81 billion identities is not 5.81 billion people

Every number on this page is a count of something slightly different, and mixing them is the most common error in social media statistics. Kepios counts user identities: an identity is a profile or account that an advertising tool or company report counts as active. One person with two Instagram accounts can be counted twice, and people who use only messaging apps may not be counted at all. Kepios itself warns that identities may not represent unique individuals and that the figures should not be compared directly with older reports because its methods change.

The platforms use their own definitions. Meta reports Family daily active people, an estimate of unique people who used at least one of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp on a given day, averaged over the last month of the quarter. Snap and Pinterest report monthly active users, Snap also reports daily active users, and Reddit reports daily and weekly active uniques, which include people who are not logged in. Tencent reports combined monthly active users of Weixin and WeChat. Survey based sources such as Pew Research Center and GWI ask real people what they use, which measures reach among adults or internet users rather than accounts.

• Identities (Kepios): accounts, de-duplicated within countries where possible. Best for the global total and country comparisons.
• Daily or monthly active users (companies): best for the size and growth of a single platform, but every company defines active differently.
• Survey shares (Pew, GWI, Eurostat): best for the share of a population that uses a platform, and for age or gender splits.
• Advertising reach: the audience a platform tells advertisers it can reach, often aged 18 and over. Useful for country rankings such as the countries with the most Facebook users, but not a count of people.

What the platforms say about their own users

The table below lists the most recent user figure that each company has published or stated in public, with the metric and date. We include only figures from the companies themselves. Where a company gives a round number such as more than 3 billion, we show it as stated. Platform audiences overlap heavily and cannot be added together. A ranked version of this table, with the history of each network, is on our page of social networks ranked by number of users.

Sources: Meta quarterly results and earnings calls, Meta Newsroom, Tencent Q2 2026 results, Telegram founder statement of 19 March 2025, TikTok Newsroom (27 September 2021), Snap Q2 2026 results, Pinterest and Reddit Q3 2026 results. Snap reports third quarter results in November. X and ByteDance do not publish audited user figures.

Three features stand out. First, Meta owns all three apps known to have more than 3 billion monthly users, which is why its combined daily audience of 3.64 billion equals about 63 percent of all social media identities. Facebook stopped being reported separately after December 2023, when it had 3.07 billion monthly and 2.11 billion daily users; Meta now reports only the combined family figure. Second, the largest video platform, YouTube, does not publish a current user count; Alphabet instead reports revenue, and said that YouTube revenue across ads and subscriptions exceeded $60 billion in 2025. Third, the fastest growing platforms in percentage terms are the smaller ones that still report detailed numbers, notably Reddit and Pinterest.

TikTok is the hardest platform to measure. Its last global milestone, more than 1 billion people, dates from September 2021, and ByteDance does not file public accounts. In January 2026 TikTok set up a majority American owned joint venture for its United States business, in which ByteDance keeps a 19.9 percent stake, ending the threat of a ban under the 2024 divestment law. Advertising reach data offer an indirect view of TikTok audiences by country; see our pages on the countries with the most TikTok users and the wider TikTok topic overview.

Meta reaches 3.64 billion people a day, but growth has slowed to 3 percent

Because Meta measures unique people across four apps, its Family daily active people metric is the closest thing to a daily census of social media outside China. The number reached 3.64 billion on average in September 2026, up 3 percent on a year earlier. Two years before, in December 2024, it was 3.35 billion, and in December 2023 it was 3.19 billion. Growth slowed through 2026: the year on year increase was 8 percent in September 2025, 4 percent in March 2026 and 3 percent in June and September 2026.

A rare dip: the March 2026 figure of 3.56 billion was below the 3.58 billion of December 2025, before growth resumed in the June and September quarters.

The dip in March 2026 was the only quarter on quarter decline in this period. The Kepios report attributes it to internet disruptions in Iran and restrictions on WhatsApp in Russia, two markets with very large WhatsApp audiences. The recovery to 3.64 billion by September shows that the Meta audience is still growing in absolute terms, but at a pace close to world population growth plus new internet users. For the history of each Meta app, see our Facebook statistics, Instagram statistics and daily users of Facebook products pages.

Instagram is now the main source of growth inside Meta. It passed 3 billion monthly users in September 2025, seven years after it reached 1 billion in June 2018, and Mark Zuckerberg told investors on 29 July 2026 that it had reached 2 billion daily users. Threads, launched in July 2023, passed 500 million monthly users in June 2026. WhatsApp has had more than 3 billion monthly users since at least April 2025.

Reddit and Pinterest grow fastest, the global total slowest

Comparing year on year growth rates across companies is possible because each one reports a change on its own metric. The latest results show a clear pattern: smaller platforms that are still expanding outside North America grow fastest, while the giants and the global total grow at low single digit rates. Reddit weekly active uniques rose 16 percent and daily uniques 12 percent in the third quarter of 2026. Pinterest monthly users rose 10 percent to a record 661 million. Snapchat daily users rose 5 percent in the second quarter, and Meta daily people 3 percent.

Small platforms grow faster: Reddit and Pinterest are adding users at three to five times the rate of the Meta family.

The geography of growth matters as much as the rate. Almost all of the gains at Snap, Pinterest and Reddit come from outside the United States. Snapchat daily users fell 7 percent in North America and 2 percent in Europe in the second quarter of 2026 but rose 12 percent in the rest of the world, to 303 million. Pinterest grew 4 percent in the United States and Canada, 7 percent in Europe and 13 percent elsewhere. At Reddit, daily uniques in the United States fell 2 percent to 50.7 million while international daily uniques rose 24 percent to 79.6 million.

Sources: Snap Q2 2026 results; Pinterest and Reddit Q3 2026 results. Pinterest regional figures are rounded by the company and add up to 662 million. Year on year changes in brackets.

About 19 hours a week on social and video platforms

Time spent comes from surveys rather than company data. In the Digital 2027 report, Kepios cites GWI research showing that internet users spend an average of 19 hours and 18 minutes per week on social media and online video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, 42 minutes more than a year earlier. That works out at about 2 hours and 45 minutes a day. The year before, the Digital 2026 report gave 18 hours and 36 minutes a week, or well over two and a half hours a day, and said that the typical online adult uses 6.75 different social platforms each month (GWI, Q2 2025).

These are averages across the internet users that GWI surveys, so they hide wide differences by age and by country. Our page on daily social media usage worldwide compares countries and age groups.

GWI also asks people to name their favourite platform. Among active social media users aged 16 and over, Instagram came first with 17.8 percent, just ahead of WhatsApp with 17.1 percent. Facebook was third with 13.3 percent, followed by WeChat with 11.2 percent and TikTok with 10.0 percent. Measured against their own users, WeChat (43.8 percent) and Douyin (38.4 percent) inspire the most loyalty, which reflects how central these apps are to daily life in China.

A two horse race at the top: Instagram and WhatsApp are each the favourite of about one in six users, ahead of Facebook.

Social media becomes the largest advertising channel: $394.6 billion in 2026

Social media is now the largest single channel in global advertising. WARC Media published its latest Global Ad Forecast on 7 October 2026. It expects social media advertising to grow 21.3 percent to $394.6 billion in 2026, the strongest growth of any medium, within total global ad spend of $1.34 trillion, up 11.9 percent. That puts social media at about 29 percent of all advertising, ahead of search at $295.7 billion and retail media at $202.1 billion. WARC expects total growth to moderate to 8.4 percent in 2027, taking the market to $1.46 trillion.

Social leads search: WARC expects advertisers to spend about $99 billion more on social media than on search in 2026.

The concentration of this market is striking. WARC estimates that Alphabet, Amazon and Meta together will take 59.7 percent of global ad spend outside China in 2026, or $659.6 billion. Meta is by far the largest pure social media seller: its advertising revenue was $196.18 billion in 2025 and $63.06 billion in the third quarter of 2026 alone. In the United States, the IAB and PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report put total internet advertising at nearly $300 billion in 2025, up 13.9 percent. For channel trends, platform shares and the history of social ad budgets, see our page on social media ad spend worldwide and the broader advertising and marketing statistics.

Meta made $200.97 billion in 2025, more than every other listed social company combined

Revenue figures from filings are the most reliable numbers in this industry because they are audited. Meta reported revenue of $200.97 billion in 2025, up 22 percent, after $164.50 billion in 2024 and $134.90 billion in 2023. Net income was $60.46 billion. Alphabet does not report YouTube as a segment, but it discloses YouTube advertising revenue, which was $40.37 billion in 2025, and said that YouTube revenue across ads and subscriptions exceeded $60 billion. The listed social media companies that report full accounts are far smaller: Snap had revenue of $5.93 billion, Pinterest $4.22 billion and Reddit $2.20 billion in 2025.

One company dominates: Meta revenue was almost five times YouTube advertising revenue and about 16 times the combined revenue of Snap, Pinterest and Reddit.

Growth rates tell a different story from scale. Reddit grew fastest in 2025, with revenue up 69 percent, and it kept that pace into 2026 with third quarter revenue of $895 million, up 53 percent, and net income of $283 million. Pinterest grew 16 percent in 2025 but slowed to 12 percent in the third quarter of 2026, when net income fell to $21.5 million. Snap grew 11 percent in 2025, still made a net loss of $460 million, and returned to stronger growth of 19 percent in the second quarter of 2026. Meta revenue accelerated: it rose 33 percent in the first quarter of 2026, 28 percent in the second and 26 percent in the third, to $64.60 billion.

Sources: company results releases and SEC filings. YouTube growth rates are BusinessStats calculations from Alphabet figures ($36.15 billion in 2024; $10.26 billion in Q3 2025). Snap reports Q3 2026 results in November 2026.

Where the money comes from is also worth noting. In the third quarter of 2026 Meta booked $26.22 billion of revenue from customers in the United States and Canada, $16.99 billion from Asia Pacific, $14.02 billion from Europe and $7.37 billion from the rest of the world, based on the address of the advertiser rather than the user. Advertising made up 97.6 percent of Meta revenue in the quarter, by our calculation. A side by side comparison of more companies is on our page about the revenue of selected social media companies, and the Alphabet breakdown is in our Alphabet annual revenue report.

YouTube and Facebook still lead among US adults

The Pew Research Center has tracked social media use among American adults since 2005, which makes it the best source for long term trends in one country. Its 2026 survey, conducted from 30 January to 18 June 2026 and published on 19 October 2026, found that 84 percent of US adults use YouTube and 70 percent use Facebook. Instagram (51 percent) is the only other platform used by a majority. TikTok is used by 37 percent, WhatsApp by 33 percent and LinkedIn by 31 percent. Snapchat (26 percent), Reddit (25 percent), X (18 percent) and Nextdoor (18 percent) follow.

TikTok and Instagram gained most: TikTok use rose 16 points and Instagram 11 points in five years, while X fell 5 points.

The five year comparison shows where attention has moved. TikTok reached 37 percent of adults in 2025 and stayed there in 2026, after only 21 percent in 2021. Instagram rose from 40 to 51 percent. Facebook has barely moved since 2021, at 68 to 71 percent, and remains the second most used platform. X is the only large platform with a clear decline, from 23 percent in 2021 to 18 percent in 2026. In its 2025 report, Pew found that about half of adults use YouTube and Facebook every day, that daily Facebook use is highest among adults aged 30 to 64, and that 80 percent of adults under 30 use Instagram, against 19 percent of those aged 65 and over.

Age and gender differences are large on almost every platform. Our page on the gender split of social media users by platform compares the share of men and women on each network worldwide.

Nine in ten US teens use YouTube, and Facebook has lost its young audience

Pew surveys teenagers aged 13 to 17 separately. Its latest survey, of 1,458 teens between 25 September and 9 October 2025, found that 92 percent use YouTube, 68 percent TikTok, 63 percent Instagram and 55 percent Snapchat. Only 31 percent use Facebook, compared with 71 percent in the 2014-15 survey, the clearest generational shift in the data. WhatsApp is used by 24 percent of teens, Reddit by 17 percent and X by 16 percent.

Remarkably stable since 2022: the teen platform mix barely changed in three years; the big move, away from Facebook, happened in the 2010s.

Intensity is a bigger concern for parents and regulators than reach. In the same survey, 21 percent of teens said they use TikTok almost constantly and 17 percent said the same of YouTube, while 12 percent each said so of Instagram and Snapchat. Four in ten teens said they are online almost constantly. A new dimension in the 2025 survey is artificial intelligence: 64 percent of teens had used an AI chatbot, and about three in ten use one every day.

From the EU Digital Services Act to the Australian under 16 ban

Social media regulation moved from debate to enforcement between 2023 and 2026. The European Union Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, was adopted on 19 October 2022, entered into force on 16 November 2022 and has applied to all online intermediaries since 17 February 2024. The strictest obligations, on risk assessment, audits, advertising transparency and data access for researchers, apply to very large online platforms with at least 45 million monthly users in the EU. The Commission designated the first 17 such platforms and 2 search engines on 25 April 2023, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube, and gave them four months to comply.

Sources: Official Journal of the European Union and European Commission; UK Ofcom; Australian Government (Prime Minister and Department of Infrastructure); company announcement for TikTok as reported on 22 and 23 January 2026.

The first fine under the Digital Services Act came on 5 December 2025, when the Commission fined X 120 million euros for a misleading design of its blue checkmark, an inadequate advertising repository and refusing researchers access to public data. It was the first non-compliance decision under the law. On the same day the Commission also accepted commitments offered by TikTok in a separate Digital Services Act case.

Australia went further than any other country. Amendments to the Online Safety Act passed in November 2024 require age restricted platforms to take reasonable steps to stop children under 16 from having accounts, with penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars. The rule took effect on 10 December 2025 and applies to services such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, Facebook and YouTube, while messaging, online gaming, education and health services are exempt. On 16 January 2026 the government said that more than 4.7 million under 16 accounts had been deactivated, removed or restricted in the first weeks. In the United Kingdom, the child safety duties of the Online Safety Act came into force on 25 July 2025, requiring age checks for harmful content, with fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10 percent of qualifying worldwide revenue.

These rules are starting to show up in the data. The latest Kepios country reports use data for October 2025, two months before the Australian minimum age took effect, so the account closures are not yet visible in national totals. At global level, Kepios already names account purges at Meta as one reason identity growth slowed in 2026.

How this page was compiled

Every figure on this page was checked against the original publisher on 2 November 2026. Global adoption figures come from the Kepios global reports published on DataReportal, with the reference date of each report. Platform user numbers come only from the companies themselves: quarterly results filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, results releases from Tencent, and statements by company executives on earnings calls or company newsrooms. Revenue comes from audited annual results and quarterly releases. The social advertising total is a WARC Media forecast and is labelled as such. US usage shares come from Pew Research Center surveys, and regulatory dates come from the Official Journal of the European Union, the European Commission, Ofcom and the Australian Government.

• Periods: each number carries its own period. Company figures are for the latest reported quarter; Snap had not yet reported its third quarter of 2026 at the time of writing.
• Not comparable: identities, daily active people, monthly active users, weekly uniques and survey shares measure different things and should not be added or ranked against each other.
• Calculations: shares of internet users, the advertising share of revenue, the social share of total ad spend, the all other platforms share and YouTube growth rates are BusinessStats calculations from the published figures.
• Left out: estimates of TikTok revenue, X user numbers and social commerce sales are not shown because no primary source publishes them.

The previous edition of this page stated that 5.24 billion people used social media in 2026, a figure that Kepios published for early 2025, and gave estimates such as a $260 billion social media industry, 1.92 billion TikTok users, 850 million Snapchat users and $165 billion of Meta revenue for 2025, none of which match a primary source. All have been replaced with the verified figures above.

Social media in eight numbers

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