The World’s Relationship With Social Media, In Numbers
The number of active social media users has risen to more than 5 billion, or about 62.3% of humanity, according to a report by media monitoring company Meltwater and social media agency We Are Social.
Titled “Digital 2024: Global Overview Report”, the 550+ page report covers various data points across the entire online ecosystem – from social media to smart devices, gaming to social commerce.
In a bumper year for digital milestones, the report indicates that active social media user identities have passed 5 billion, which is equivalent to 62.3% of the world’s population, and that the global total increased by 266 million over the past year – an annual growth of 5.6%.
The average social media user now spends 2 hours and 23 minutes daily on their social platforms and uses 6.7 platforms each month.
TikTok has the highest average time per Android user of any social platform globally with an impressive 34 hours per month, which equates to more than an hour per day. At second place is YouTube, with the average user spending just over 28 hours per month on its Android app.
The social network with the most users continues to be Meta's Facebook with 2.19 billion, while Meta's Instagram comes in next with 1.65 billion. The figure was narrowly trailed by TikTok at 1.56 billion.
The report also cites interesting data, like the most searched entry on Wikipedia last year was “ChatGPT”, the AI large language model that was developed by OpenAI.
Here’s a breakdown on the report’s key takeaways:
DIGITAL 2024: KEY STATS AND FIGURES
• The typical internet user now spends 6 hours and 40 minutes online daily, up by 3 minutes per day, or 1%, year-on-year.
• Facebook, which celebrated its 20th birthday on February 04, grew its global ad reach by more than 200 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-onyear growth of 10.5%.
• LinkedIn, Snapchat, WeChat, and Pinterest all reported strong user growth year-on-year.
• Digital ad spending grew by 10% year-on-year, with almost $720 billion spent on digital ads in 2023.
• Social ad spending increased by 9.3% to USD $207 billion, and investment in influencer activities increased by 17%.
• The typical internet user now spends 17 minutes per day less watching TV content than they did this time last year, a decline of 8.2% year-on-year.
• In a rich analysis of TikTok hashtags, Digital 2024 reports that TikToks tagged with #fyp (for your page) have amassed a total of 55½ trillion views – making it the platform’s top hashtag.