Social Media Statistics 2026: Users, Platforms and Time Spent

There are 5.79 billion social media user identities in the world as of April 2026, equal to 69.9% of the global population, according to DataReportal's Digital 2026 mid-year update. The word "identities" is doing real work in that sentence. One person with accounts on four platforms counts four times, so the number of people is lower, and nobody publishes a reliable count of them.

What the platforms do publish, in filings and on earnings calls, is their own user counts. This report brings those together with the two survey sources worth trusting, DataReportal's Digital 2026 series (built on GWI survey data) and Pew Research Center's 2025 survey of US adults. Every figure carries its date and source.

Social media statistics: the key figures

• 5.79 billion social media user identities worldwide, 69.9% of the population, up 294 million (5.4%) in a year (DataReportal, April 2026).
• 3.60 billion people use at least one Meta app every day, on average, in June 2026 (Meta, Q2 2026 results).
• WhatsApp and Instagram each have more than 3 billion monthly users (Meta, 2025). Telegram has passed 1 billion (March 2025).
• Online adults use an average of 6.75 social platforms a month and spend more than two and a half hours a day on social and video platforms (DataReportal, Digital 2026).
• 84% of US adults use YouTube and 71% use Facebook. Instagram is the only other platform used by half of Americans (Pew Research Center, 2025).
• Threads reached 500 million monthly users in June 2026, three years after launch (Meta).
• TikTok reports 189 million monthly users in the EU for the first half of 2026, its only externally audited user figure (DSA transparency report).

How many people use social media?

DataReportal counted 5.66 billion user identities in October 2025 (68.7% of the population) and 5.79 billion by April 2026. Growth was 5.4% over the year, or about 800,000 new identities a day.

Two things turn identities into people. Among adults aged 16 and over who are online, 96.7% use a social network or messaging app each month, so social media use is close to universal wherever the internet is. And those adults average 6.75 platforms each, which is why identities run well ahead of headcount. A fair reading is that most of the roughly 5.5 billion people online use social media, with the exact number depending on where you draw the line between a messaging app and a social network.

By gender, DataReportal puts the global user base at 54.4% male and 45.6% female, a gap that mostly reflects lower internet access among women in South Asia and Africa rather than lower interest. Where women are online, they use social media slightly more than men do: 97.3% of female internet users against 96.6% of male.

The largest platforms, by their own numbers

Platforms report different things. Meta reports people across its whole family of apps, Snap and Reddit report daily users, Pinterest and the messaging apps report monthly users, and LinkedIn reports registered members. The table keeps each company's own metric rather than forcing them into one column.

Three large platforms are missing because they do not publish comparable figures. Google does not report YouTube's user count in Alphabet's results. X has not published audited user numbers since it was taken private. TikTok's global and US figures come from its own occasional statements, most recently "more than 170 million Americans" in March 2024, so the EU number above, which is required by law and audited, is the one to quote.

On the survey side, DataReportal's GWI data for Digital 2026 ranks Facebook first by share of internet users who use it each month (56.9%), followed by Instagram (55.1%) and WhatsApp (54.0%). Asked for their favourite platform, users pick WhatsApp most often (17.4%), then Instagram (16.4%) and Facebook (13.0%).

Social media use in the United States

Pew Research Center surveyed 5,022 US adults between February and June 2025. YouTube and Facebook remain the only platforms used by a majority in every age group.

The changes since 2021 are where the story is. TikTok use rose from 21% of adults to 37%. Instagram went from 40% to 50%, WhatsApp from 23% to 32% and Reddit from 18% to 26%. YouTube and Facebook were flat.

Daily use follows the same shape. About half of US adults visit Facebook and YouTube at least once a day, including 37% who open Facebook several times a day and 33% who do the same with YouTube. A quarter use TikTok daily, rising to about half of 18 to 29 year olds and falling to 5% of those 65 and over. Only 10% use X daily.

Pew also finds that women are more likely than men to use Instagram (55% against 44%), that men lean toward X and Reddit, and that Reddit use climbs with education: about four in ten college graduates use it, against 15% of adults with a high school education or less.

How much time people spend

DataReportal puts the global adult average at more than two and a half hours a day on social and video platforms combined, or 18 hours and 36 minutes a week. Pure social networking accounts for a little over an hour of that; the rest is video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, which the survey counts separately from "social media" in the narrow sense.

Frequency varies by country more than the averages suggest. Nigerians use social media on 5.84 days out of seven, the most of any country surveyed, while in France, Germany, Czechia, South Korea and Japan the typical adult opens a social platform less than once every two days.

What the numbers mean for app marketing

• Nearly all of this happens on phones (see the smartphone statistics report). Reach is not the constraint any more. With 6.75 platforms per person, the question is which one your users treat as their main one, and GWI's "favourite" data says that is WhatsApp or Instagram for a third of the world.
• In the US, YouTube is the only platform that reaches almost everyone under 65. For an audience over 50, Facebook still beats everything but YouTube by a wide margin.
• TikTok's audience is young and daily: 63% of US adults under 30 use it and about half of them every day. Its EU audience is still growing 6% every six months. The TikTok statistics report goes deeper on its audience.
• Messaging apps are social media now. WhatsApp and Telegram together report more than 4 billion monthly users, and WhatsApp is the single most-named favourite platform worldwide.
• Threads at 500 million and Reddit at 514 million weekly users are the two networks adding scale fastest. Both are cheap to test as organic channels because their audiences are still forming habits.

How these figures are counted

DataReportal's totals combine platform-reported advertising audiences and GWI's survey of internet users aged 16 to 64 in 54 markets, and the company itself warns that user identities are not unique people. Company figures come from SEC filings (Meta, Snap, Pinterest, Reddit), Microsoft's own statements (LinkedIn), Meta's newsroom (Threads) and public statements by Mark Zuckerberg and Pavel Durov (Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram). TikTok's EU figure is an average monthly active recipient count published under the Digital Services Act. Pew's US figures come from a probability-based survey, so they describe adults, not accounts.

FAQs

How many people use social media in 2026?

DataReportal counts 5.79 billion social media user identities as of April 2026, or 69.9% of the world's population. Because people use several platforms, the number of individual users is lower. Among adults who are online, 96.7% use a social or messaging platform every month.

What is the number one social media platform right now?

By company-reported figures, Meta's apps lead: WhatsApp and Instagram each have more than 3 billion monthly users, and 3.60 billion people use at least one Meta app daily. In the US, YouTube is used by the largest share of adults, 84%, according to Pew Research Center.

How much time does the average person spend on social media?

More than two and a half hours a day on social and video platforms combined, according to DataReportal's Digital 2026 report, which is 18 hours and 36 minutes a week. Time on social networks alone is a little over an hour a day.

How many social media accounts does the average person have?

Online adults use an average of 6.75 different social platforms each month, per GWI data in DataReportal's Digital 2026 report. Men average 6.81 and women 6.73.

Which country uses social media the most?

By frequency, Nigeria, where the average user is on social media 5.84 days a week, according to DataReportal. By number of users, India and China have the largest audiences, though neither Meta nor Chinese platforms publish comparable country-level counts.

Sources

• DataReportal: Digital 2026 Global Overview Report (February 2026), key social media findings and the Digital 2026 mid-year update (April 2026)
• Pew Research Center: Americans' Social Media Use 2025 (November 2025)
• Meta: Q2 2026 results; Threads at 500 million monthly users; WhatsApp's 3 billion as reported by TechCrunch; Instagram's 3 billion as reported by CNBC
• Snap: Q2 2026 results (Form 8-K)
• Pinterest: Q2 2026 results (Form 8-K)
• Reddit: Q2 2026 results
• Microsoft: LinkedIn leadership update, October 1, 2026
• Telegram: Pavel Durov's statement as reported by TASS, March 19, 2025
• TikTok: EU figures from DSA transparency reports, compiled by socialmediatransparency.org

All figures were checked against the sources above on October 6, 2026.