In the 2018 Q2 Global Digital reports for We Are Social and Hootsuite shows that people around the world are still using social media with their number growing.
In just three months of 2018, the internet saw more than 100 million new social media users, reaching a total of almost 3.3 billion by the end of March. Overall, the growth of the internet is pretty strong, and also somehow interesting.
First of all, internet users rose by 276 million between January and March, adding up to a total of 4.087 billion by the end of 2018 Q2. And with more than 5 billion mobile device owners around the world, 6 out of 10 of them own a smartphone. This is a 2 percent growth in a year period.
With many mobile users owning smartphones, they continue to grow their share of social media use. About 389 million people access social media networks for the first time in Q1.
What makes Q2 interesting is that, despite numerous data breaches and hacks, people are still eager to use social media networks. So here, there is no sign of anti-social behavior.
At least 390 million new users were signed up to a social platform in the twelve months to the end of March. This is about 8 percent increase if compared to the same growth trend three months earlier.
Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal doesn’t seem to have affected growth trends in Facebook’s overall user numbers. The social media giant reported that it experienced 3.2 percent growth in monthly active users (MAUs) since the start of 2018, with its own advertising tool reporting a total of 2.234 billion global users at the end of March.
What this means, Facebook saw 67 million new users in the past 3 months alone.
However, young people, mainly teens, are indeed leaving Facebook. The data suggest that Facebook users ranging from the age of 13 to 17 dropped by 10 million since January. Despite the loss, Facebook managed to add 17 million new users aged 45 and above, with 3 million of them aging 65 and older.
As younger people are moving away from Facebook, the media age of Facebook's MAU is creeping up.
While the number is impressive, Facebook is experiencing some problems. For example, typical Facebook users in average only have ever Liked one page. People post less often, and average engagement has dropped by 3 percent in the first months of 2018.
The report suggests that Facebook's reach is falling even faster, with average Pages reaching only 8.9 percent of its fan base. This is a decrease from an average of 10.7 percent in 2017. As a result, fewer Pages invested for paid media.
And at the same time, Facebook's average organic post reach also dropped from 8.0 percent to 7.2 percent.
Facebook-owned Instagram however, reached 813 million MAUs by the end of March, an increase of more than 35 percent in a year period.
And as for Twitter, its user growth stagnates, by only achieving 5 percent year-on-year growth in the 12 months to the end of March.
Twitter users are generally older than those using Facebook and Instagram, with more than half at age over 30. The platform has about 40 percent more users over the age of 35 than it has users under the age of 25.