There are plenty of reports out there that give you a narrow view of the state of social media, but
Digital 2021 from Hootsuite and We Are Social takes a truly global approach. It analyses digital, social, and mobile data from every country in the world, and is used as a reference by millions of global brands and social marketers like you every year. So jump right in…
Did you know that there are now 4.2 billion social media users around the world, nearly double what the number from five years ago in 2016, when the figure was 2.31 billion? Now, that doesn’t represent 4.2 billion individual people (users for individual apps are combined to reach the figure, and the average person has 8.4 social accounts), but it does show just how much the market for social and messaging services has grown in that time.
And users are spending more time on social media, too. Last year, the global average for time spent on social media by users aged 16 to 64 was 2 hours and 25 minutes per day. That’s 34 minutes more than it was in 2015.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook tops the chart of the most-used social mobile apps worldwide, absorbing an average of 19.5 hours of users’ time per month. If you combine all of Facebook’s main apps (including Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and WhatsApp Business), Facebook properties claim an average of 61.2 hours of our time per month.
And people like us, who use social media for work, aren’t exactly a tiny minority these days. 40.4% of internet users ages 16 to 64 use social media for work.
The report has almost 300 pages of global social media and digital insights like this, so if you want to be smart and informed (and look smart and informed to your boss or clients)
download Digital 2021 for free today.
