YouTube is the most popular social media platform worldwide and remains the most widely used across generations, according to a report by casino rankings site PlayersTime.
The report, which sought to examine social media behaviors globally, found that YouTube remains the most widely used platform, with 82 percent of all global respondents reporting that they use the site. It also remains the dominant platform across all generations, reaching 95 percent of Gen Z and 90 percent of Millennial users, in addition to 83 percent of Gen Xers and 60 percent of Baby Boomers.
After YouTube, platform popularity changes by generation. For Gen Z users, Instagram ranks as the second most popular network (78 percent), followed by Facebook (70 percent), TikTok (62 percent) and X (42 percent). And though YouTube also remains Millennials’ top platform, more than three-quarters (77 percent) also use Facebook, more than half (59 percent) use Instagram and 40 percent use both Pinterest and LinkedIn. Like Millennials, Gen X also picks Facebook as a second choice (73 percent), followed by Instagram (35 percent), followed by Pinterest and LinkedIn (both 30 percent). And while they’re the least active demographic on social media, Boomers’ use of Facebook (58 percent) almost rivals their YouTube use. After that, it’s a steep drop off, as only 15 percent of Boomers reported using Instagram or Pinterest and only 10 percent said they use TikTok.
However, when measured by the total number of users, Facebook remains the platform with the largest active user base overall, totaling 3.07 billion global monthly active users. This was followed by Instagram (3 billion), WhatsApp (3 billion), YouTube (2.58 billion), TikTok (1.99 billion) and Telegram (1 billion).
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| Most popular social media platforms by number of users. |
And in terms of how much time people spend on social media platforms, TikTok leads for high engagement, with users spending an average of 97 minutes on that video site per day. Second place belongs to YouTube (85 minutes), followed by Instagram (73 minutes), Facebook (67 minutes) and WhatsApp (59 minutes).
Globally, approx. 5.7 billion people use social media, or about 68 percent of the world's population, according to the report. The United States exceeds this percentage, with 73 percent of Americans using social media, or about 254 million social media users. This makes the U.S. third-place globally when it comes to total social media user accounts (China holds the top spot, with approximately 1.28 billion social media users, and India takes second place with 500 million user accounts). Following the U.S. is Indonesia (180 million social media accounts), Brazil (150 million social media accounts) and Russia (106 million social media accounts).
However, when it comes to daily average time spent on social media, the United States ranks 22nd out of the 52 countries analyzed, spending an average of about three hours a day (2 hours and 52 minutes) on various platforms. Other countries far exceed this number. In Kenya, for example, users spend an average of about 5 hours and 10 minutes a day on social media platforms. This is followed by the Philippines, at 4 hours and 50 minutes. And Japan ranks last, with social media users spending only about 66 minutes per day on these platforms.
The PlayersTime report analyzed previous findings from DataReportal, Backlinko, Pew Research Center, Similarweb and SocialPilot, which examined average daily usage, global user counts and social media penetration rates across 68 countries.
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