According to the Digital 2020 July Global Statshot report from Hootsuite and We Are Social, 3.96 billion people are already on social media networks.
What this means, roughly 51% of the global population is already on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and others.
The milestone is even more impressive considering that most social media networks restrict the use of their platforms to those aged 13 or older. With this fact, the number indicates that nearly two-thirds (65%) of the world’s total is eligible to use social media. And the adoption is still climbing rapidly.
Social media networks saw a surge of more than 10% in the past 12 months alone, with an average of more than 1 million people starting to use social media for the first time, every single day since this date in 2019.
With more than 376 million new users since July 2019, that translates to almost 12 new users every second.
As of where the users come from, the number varies considerably. About 70% of them are from Northern America, while 7% are from Middle Africa.
In average, according to GlobalWebIndex, the typical social media user is a member of almost 9 different platforms.
Facebook is the largest social media network around, and it continues to dominate the rankings.
With more than 2.6 billion monthly active users around the world, the social media has 2 billion users using WhatsApp, and around 1.08 billion users on Instagram.
Facebook and its properties are still ahead of TikTok when it comes to monthly active users, but when it comes to growth, TikTok beats them all.
According to various data points, the ByteDance's short-form platform is growing. TikTok has around 800 million users, while the Douyin, the TikTok’s mainland-Chinese incarnation, and Kuaishou (快手) are at 400 million monthly active users.
Also from China, Sina Weibo is also growing rapidly, with over 550 million monthly active users, or up by 18% (74 million users) in 12 months time.
It should be noted however, that many of these platforms' users overlap.
As for the time users spend on using social media networks, according to a study by GlobalWebIndex, the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic has been influencing people's digital behaviors.
More than 40% of internet users have been spending more of their time online and on social media since the start of the crisis, due to the fact that many tend to have more free time as they are quarantining themselves at home. That figure tops in the Philippines with more than 60%.
On average, social media users spend 2 hours and 20 minutes per day on social media.
This data is based on surveys conducted between January and March of 2020. What this means, there is a chance that the prolonged lockdowns and 'new normal' may have resulted in even more people spending their time on social media each day.
Most of these people go to social media networks to connect with their families and friends. But since the coronavirus, more are turning to social platforms as a way of “staying up to date with news and current affairs”. Other top drivers include entertainment, as well as "filling up spare time", and “finding funny and entertaining content”.
People are also turning to social media platforms to buy things, or get more information about the products and/or services they want to buy.
Despite the huge numbers, social media only accounts for about a third of the time people spend on the internet each day.