110+ Social Media Statistics for 2022 [+ Internet in Real Time Live Infographic]

Social media has snowballed in importance over the last decade. However, just how much do people love their Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and lately TikTok accounts?

We’ve looked at the numbers and come up with some key social media statistics and facts. The figures are truly mind-boggling. While some might still shun this new type of media, there are undoubtedly many people who have embraced social media and use it daily.

While we have tried to gather the most up-to-date statistics and facts for this article, the nature of social media means that they will always be changing. Not only that, 2020 and 2021 have had a major effect on social media. With stay-at-home orders across the globe to help curb the spread of COVID-19, increasingly more people have been “forced” to use social media in other ways and/or more frequently. It would be interesting to see how our use of social media will be shaped by the pandemic years going forward.

Before we explore each of the main platforms in more detail, we first share a few stats about social media use in general. This way you can evaluate each network's strengths in context.

110+ Social Media Statistics for 2022 [+ Internet in Real Time Live Infographic]:

General Social Media Statistics13 Facebook Statistics10 Twitter Statistics25 YouTube Statistics12 Instagram Statistics14 TikTok Statistics15 Pinterest Statistics10 Snapchat Statistics15 LinkedIn Statistics

General Social Media Statistics

To give you an overview, here are the latest findings of We Are Social and Hootsuite as shared in their Digital 2022: Global Overview Report about the general state of social media:

1. As of January 2022, there were 4.62 billion social media users.

2. Just over 58% of the total population use social media.

3. Since 2012, the number of social media users has increased every year.

4. The average daily time spent using social media was 2 hours and 27 minutes.

5. On average, people use 7.5 social platforms per month.

6. The main reason why internet users use social media platforms is to stay in touch with friends and family.

7. More than 75% of internet users use social media channels to find info about products and brands.

8. About one in five internet users follow influencers on social media.

13 Facebook Statistics

1. According to data shared by Statista, Facebook had 1.96 billion daily active users as of Q2 2022. In other words, these users visit Facebook (or one of its other core products) at least once a day. This was only a slight increase on Q1 2022.

2. With regards to Facebook’s monthly active users, according to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report, it’s nearly 3 billion. It’s up about 6% since last year.

3. India is the country with the most Facebook users. As of January 2022, the country had the biggest Facebook audience with 329.65 million users. The United States has the second biggest audience with 179.65 million Facebook users, followed by Indonesia with 129.85 million users.

4. While the US doesn’t have the biggest Facebook audience, it’s still the leading social media website by far in the United States. In May 2022, it accounted for about 73% of all social media site visits. What’s more, over 80% of adult social media users in the US visit the platform at least once per week.

5. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on Facebook is estimated at 2.11 billion, according to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report. It’s down slightly from October 2021. With regards to the Facebook Marketplace specifically, Meta reports that it can reach just over 562 million with ads, 26.6% of Facebook’s total advertising reach.

6. Only 1.5% of the advertising audience use their laptop or desktop computer to access the platform.

7. The average number of hours per month that each Facebook user spends using the Facebook app on Android phones are 19.6 hours. It’s the highest in Mexico where it’s just over 26 hours.

8. In Q1 2022, more than 800 million hours of live streams were watched on Facebook Gaming. While it’s a lot, it doesn’t come quite close to the 1.29+ billion hours of streaming content that were watched on Facebook Gaming in Q3 2022.

9. Facebook is also clearly a favorite platform for businesses. Over 200 million small businesses around the globe use its tools.

10. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2022, Facebook is still the social network that people use most for news, in particular older generations. In the same breath, Facebook users complain that compared to other social networks, they see too much news in their feed.

11. The brand with the most-followed Facebook page is Samsung, while Cristiano Ronaldo is the athlete with the most-followed Facebook page.

12. As of June 2022, Shakira is the musician with the most Facebook fans (just over 100 million). Eminem is in second spot and Rihanna in third place.

13. In Q1 2022, Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts. Fake accounts are regarded as accounts that are created to represent non-human entities or with a malicious intent.

10 Twitter Statistics

1. According to data shared by Statista, as of Q1 2022, Twitter boasted 229 million monetizable daily active users. It’s up by 30 million users in a year.

2. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on Twitter is estimated at 436.4 million, according to data shared by Digital 2022: Global Overview Report.

3. In 2021, Twitter generated just over $5 billion in ad revenue. It’s anticipated that it will reach nearly $10 billion by 2026.

4. Unlike Facebook, Twitter’s biggest user base is located in the United States with 76.9 million users as of January 2022. Japan has the second biggest audience based on the number of Twitter users (58.95 million), followed by India in third place (23.6 million). The United Kingdom features only in sixth spot with 18.4 million.

5. As of April 2022, former US president Barack Obama had the most Twitter followers with nearly 132 million. Justin Bieber has the second most with 114.36 million and Katry Perry is in third place with 108.9 million followers. The athlete with the most followers is none other than Cristiano with just shy of 100 million followers.

6. A global online survey completed in 2022 revealed that more than half (55%) of weekly Twitter users prefer seeing informative content on Twitter. Only about 32% wanted to see inspirational tweets.

7. The most-liked tweet ever was posted in August 2020 to announce the death of Chadwick Boseman. To date, the tweet has received over 7 million likes. The tweet with the second-most likes was posted by none other than Elon Musk. The tweet that reads “Next I’m buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in” was posted at the end of April 2022 and has already received nearly 5 million likes. Though, first he needs to complete buying Twitter…

8. The most tweeted TV shows in 2021 included reality TV competition favorites Big Brother Brazil and A Fazenda 13, while K-drama Squid Game took the third spot for most discussed TV show worldwide. When it comes to movies, superheroes dominated the Twitter sphere.

9. In 2021, large-scale sport events started to return to our stadiums and TV screens. Manchester United was the most discussed sports team on Twitter in 2021 and, in addition to boasting this title, the team’s tweet welcoming Cristiano home was the second-most retweeted tweet worldwide. The most retweeted tweet of 2021 came from the official account of BTS, calling for an end to racism.

10. The loudly crying face 😭 emoji was the most tweeted emoji in 2021, according to Twitter’s official data. In second spot, it was the face with tears of joy 😂 emoji, while the eyes emoji also made the top 10 list for the first time in 2021.

25 YouTube Statistics

1. India has the biggest YouTube audience size. As of April 2022, there were 467 million subscribers, followed by the United States with 247 million and Indonesia with 139 million.

2. The number of monthly active users (MAU) of the iOS YouTube app have risen considerably since the onset of COVID-19, but there’s no similar rise for Android devices. According to statistics shared by YouTube, as of Q4 2021, the YouTube mobile app had 866 million monthly active users on iPhone and iPad. On the other hand, there were only about 23.8 million monthly active users on the YouTube Android app. Combined, that’s seriously a lot of people watching YouTube videos each month on mobile devices.

3. The average time spent per user via the mobile app per month is 23.7 hours. In South Korea, it’s the highest — nearly 40 hours per user per month, while in Germany it’s the lowest — 11.3 hours. This data shared by App Annie takes into account only Android devices, though. While the monthly active users differ quite significantly between iOS and Android devices, it’s safe to say that the average time spent is pretty similar across the different devices.

4. Brand awareness of YouTube is estimated at 94% in the US, making them and Facebook the leading social networks ranked by brand awareness in the US in 2022. Of the 94% who were familiar with YouTube, 73% used it and 67% indicated that they liked it.

5. The most watched video on YouTube is "Baby Shark Dance" by Pinkfong Kids’ Songs & Stories. As of April 2022, it has had 10.41 billion views. What’s more, it was the first YouTube video to exceed 10 billion views. It’s followed by “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee (7.8 billion views), while “Johny Johny Yes Papa” by LooLoo Kids was in third spot with 6.26 billion views.

6. “Dynamite” by BTS earned more than 101 million views in its first 24 hours, setting a new record for the biggest music video debut. In fact, eight of the top 10 24-hour debuts are from Korean pop artists. Equally impressive is that when it premiered in August 2020, 1.54 million concurrent viewers tuned in to watch it, another new record for the biggest YouTube premiere. Since then, it has been watched over 1.5 billion times and received 34 million likes.

7. In 2021, the top search queries on YouTube were song(s), DJ, dance, new song, and TikTok. According to Statista, other organic keywords that were searched for most included pornhub, and Amazon.

8. The most searched questions on YouTube were about products provided by the platform. For example, “how to download YouTube videos” was searched 127,000 times per month on average in Q1 2021.

9. In 2021, DataDrivenInvestor, one of the fastest growing publications on Medium, estimated that the number of YouTube channels with over 1 million subscribers are approximately 23,000-24,000 channels.

10. In 2021, YouTube rated MrBeast as the #1 Top Creator in the US for the second year in a row. Across his channels, there are over 100 million subscribers. MrBeast's videos were watched over 1 billion times in April 2021 alone.

11. T-Series, the biggest music label and movie studio in India, is the top YouTube channel by subscriber count, having broken the 200-million mark with 220 million subscribers, as of July 2022. Per month, it generates about 3.5 billion views.

12. With regards to YouTube’s ad audience reach, there was also a year-on-year increase. In 2022, it was up by 11.9%. According to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report, the potential reach of ads on YouTube is 2.56 billion.

13. In Q4 2021, YouTube earned worldwide advertising revenues of $8.633 million, setting a new platform record. YouTube’s advertising revenues have increased significantly in 2021, but it decreased to just below $7 million for the first quarter of 2022. That said, Q1 2022’s ad revenue was still higher than what it was for the same period the previous year.

14. Recent data from YouTube indicates that gaming is a significant niche on YouTube. In the first half of 2021, YouTube saw 800 billion gaming-related video views, 90 million hours of live-stream content, and 250 million gaming videos uploaded. It’s especially popular among Gen Z viewers. A survey shared by Deloitte reveals that video games are this age group’s favorite form of digital entertainment.

15. As of June 2022, PewDiePie (formally known as Felix Kjellberg) has the most popular YouTube gaming channel with 44.3 million subscribers.

16. YouTube Gaming Live generated a total of 1.13 billion hours of content watched in the first quarter of 2022. That said, the hours streamed on YouTube Gaming Live were down for this period. In Q1 2022, about 8.7 million hours of online games were streamed, a year-on-year decrease of about 17%.

17. While Gen Z viewers have listed video games as their favorite, an Ipsos survey found that 65% of Gen Z agree that content that’s relevant to them is more important than content that loads of people are talking about.

18. A survey among global parents completed in September 2021 has found that for 54% of kids the most common mobile activity was watching YouTube videos. Online gaming was their second favorite .

19. YouTube is more popular among men. As of April 2022, about 54% of users were male.

20. The vast majority (85%) have watched a live stream during the past year. More than half agree that watching live streams have helped them to feel connected to others.

21. Just over half (51%) have watched a podcast recording over the past year.

22. Launched 15 years ago, YouTube’s Partner Program had 2 million members, as of August 2021. To qualify, you need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of overall watch time during the past year.

23. Videos relating to Minecraft have been viewed more than 1 trillion times between 2010 and 2021. The first full year of Minecraft on the platform was in 2021. Interestingly, it took about eight years for the Minecraft community on YouTube to reach 500 billion views, but only about two years to double that view count. Although male creators dominated this niche for many years, the creator who now generates the most views of Minecraft videos is a woman, Aphmau. In 2020, she became the most-viewed Minecraft creator.

24. There have been over 1,500 "reaction videos" for Lil Nas X's "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)" uploaded to YouTube during 2021. What’s more, the official music video, along with the alternative takes and fan uploads have generated more than 490 million views globally.

25. In Q4 2021, more than 1.2 billion comments were deleted from YouTube. The biggest reason was spam with 75% of the comments that were removed being classified as spam or misleading content. Cyberbullying and harassment accounted for only about 11%.

12 Instagram Statistics

1. According to data shared by Statista, Instagram had just over 1.2 billion monthly active users. It’s predicted that it will have almost 1.44 billion users by 2025. To give you a better idea of its impressive growth rate, the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report reveals that the platform’s audience grew by 85 million users in just 90 days.

2. As of January 2022, India is the country with the biggest Instagram audience size (230 million users). This followed a significant increase over the last year and is now noticeably higher than the audience size in the United States where 159 million users access the photo-sharing and editing app. Brazil is in the third spot with 119 million users.

3. Data shared in Meta’s advertising resources shows that the platform’s ad reach has increased by 21% in 2021. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on Instagram is nearly 1.5 billion. Ads in their “home feed” can reach nearly 97% of their active user base each month, while Instagram Stories can reach over 1 billion users each month and ads in Instagram’s Explore tab can reach just shy of 800 million users each month.

4. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ad placements in the Instagram Shop tab specifically is estimated at nearly 188 million.

5. While Brunei doesn’t even feature in the top three countries with the most Instagram users, it has the highest Instagram reach, as of January 2022. In other words, it’s the place where Instagram reaches the biggest percentage of a population with a percentage reach of 89%. Kazakhstan is in second spot, while Turkey is in third place.

6. More than half of the platform’s global population worldwide is younger than 35, according to Statista.

7. Somewhat surprisingly, Instagram is more popular among men than women in the 13-34 age group, according to data shared by Statista.

8. According to the Digital 2022 Global Overview Report, the average time that users spend on Instagram is 11.2 hours per month. It’s the highest in Turkey (an average of 20.2 hours), and the lowest in South Korea (an average of 5.8 hours).

9. For posts published by Instagram business accounts, the average engagement rate almost doubled in the past year and is up to 1.94%. Carousel posts still have the highest engagement rate (3.15%), while photo posts have the lowest average engagement rate (1.18%).

10. The most popular post on Instagram as of May 2022 is of the Instagram egg. This picture was posted by @world_record_egg and has nearly 60 million likes (although the like numbers no longer show publicly on Instagram posts). The second most popular post on Instagram is a photo of @cristiano and @georginagio announcing their pregnancy with twins. By the end of May 2022, it has received more than 32 million likes. Photos of Ariana Grande’s wedding with Dalton Gomez that was previously in second spot dropped to fourth place.

11. As of June 2022, Cristiano Ronaldo is the user with the most Instagram followers (455 million followers). In just three months, his account grew with 15 million followers. In second spot is Kylie Jenner (455 million), followed in third place by Lionel Messi (338 million).

12. The most popular hashtags on Instagram of all time include: #love, #instagood, #fashion, #photooftheday, and #art.

14 TikTok Statistics

1. TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media apps, especially among younger users. Globally, TikTok reached 1 billion monthly active users in September 2021. To put this growth into perspective, in July 2020, it was “only” 689 million monthly active users.

2. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on TikTok is estimated at about 885 million, according to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report.

3. In 2021, the platform generated $4 billion in ad revenue. According to data shared by Statista, it’s expected to reach nearly $14 billion by 2026.

4. As of January 2022, the US had the biggest TikTok audience with about 136.5 million users. It was followed by Indonesia with approximately 99 million and Brazil with 74 million users.

5. According to data shared by Business of Apps, TikTok was the top grossing entertainment app of 2021. It generated $1.7 billion revenue. In second spot was YouTube with nearly $900 million.

6. The average number of hours per month that each TikTok user spends on the app via Android devices are about 19.6 hours. It’s the highest in the United Kingdom with an average of 27.3 hours.

7. According to Statista, TikTok is more popular among female users in the United States. Male TikTok users only add up to 39% of the platform’s user base. With regards to age, as of April 2022, 24% of the platform’s global audience were women between the ages of 18 and 24.

8. Charli D’Amelio has the greatest number of TikTok followers (132.8 million). In second spot, it’s Khabane Lame (125.2 million), followed by Bella Poarch in third place (87.1 million). It’s estimated that Charli D’Amelio earned about $17.5 million in 2021 alone, according to data shared by Statista.

9. In 2021, just over half of TikTok influencers had between 1,000 and 5,000 followers. Micro-influencers with between 5,000 and 20,000 followers accounted for about a third, while mid-tier influencers with 20,000 to 100,000 followers were just over 15%.

10. A survey completed in 2022 in the UK revealed that over 45% of fashion and lifestyle consumers that use TikTok spend anything between one and three hours per day on the platform.

11. The all-time most popular hashtags that have been used in the greatest number of TikTok posts are #FYP (which stands for For You Page), #viral, #TikTok, #duet, and #trending.

12. In 2021, Netflix was the most talked about brand on TikTok. McDonald’s came in second and FashionNova, one of the top Shopify Plus stores, in third spot.

13. In Q1 2022, nearly 35 million TikTok videos were removed automatically from the platform. In total, over 100 million TikTok videos were removed during this period. Compared to the previous quarter, this is up by about 20%.

14. More than 43 million TikTok accounts were removed in Q1 2022 alone.

15 Pinterest Statistics

1. Pinterest is the fastest social network to have reached 10 million unique monthly visitors. Considering that it was invite-only for a long period during its initial launch, this achievement is even more impressive.

2. According to info shared by Statista, as of Q1 2022, Pinterest has 433 million monthly active users across the world. It increased slightly from Q4 2021, but the number of monthly active users have declined gradually in 2021. So, it would be interesting to see the trajectory that it will follow in 2022.

3. As of January 2022, Pinterest was ranked as the 14th most-used social network across the globe based on global active users.

4. There are considerably more female Pinterest users than male users. As of the beginning of 2022, over 75% of its user base were women.

5. While it was ranked only the fourth most popular social media network in the US in 2021, the US boasts its biggest user base by far. Statistics shared by Statista reveal that as of the beginning of 2022, it had more than 86 million users in the United States. To put this into perspective, while Brazil has the second most Pinterest users, there are only 27 million users across Brazil. Mexico is in third place with nearly 18 million users.

6. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on Pinterest is estimated at nearly 226 million according to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report. It’s slightly down (3.2%) from October 2021.

7. It’s anticipated that its global ad revenue will be $4.1 billion by 2026, according to info posted by Statista. To put this into perspective, in 2021, this was slightly more than $2 billion.

8. The number of full-time employees have gradually increased since 2018. In 2018, there were 1,797 full-time employees. Fast-forward to 2021 and there were just over 3,000 full-time employees.

9. Each year since 2016, the visual bookmarking website managed to increase its annual revenue steadily. In 2021, it was estimated at nearly $2.58 billion.

10. The majority of US Pinterest users (40%) have an annual household income of more than $75,000.

11. According to SimilarWeb, between April 2022 and June 2022, the average visit duration was almost six minutes.

12. More than 95% of the top Pinterest searches are unbranded.

13. Just over 61% of Pinners in the UK have indicated that when they start a new project, they go to Pinterest. In the US, 85% of Pinners use the platform in this way.

14. Pinterest is no longer just a platform for static images. In a blog post, the platform shared that their community of Pinners is watching almost one billion videos on a daily basis.

15. Pinterest posts have a lifespan of six months and their Pinterest Predicts 2022 report suggests that it can even be as long as a year. To put this into perspective, the lifespan of posts shared on other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is merely a few hours.

10 Snapchat Statistics

1. As of Q1 2022, the Snapchat app had approximately 332 million daily active users, an increase of 13 million in a quarter. In fact, numbers have increased every quarter since Q4 2018. As with most other social networks, Snapchat's use accelerated with the outbreak of COVID-19.

2. It’s anticipated that the photo-sharing platform will reach about 513 million global users by 2024.

3. India boasts the biggest Snapchat audience, as of April 2022, with 144.35 million users. The United States is in second spot (107 million users). There’s a huge jump between second and third spot, though. While France has the third biggest audience, it has fewer than 25 million users.

4. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads via Snapchat was estimated at 557 million at the beginning of 2022. This works out to a year-on-year increase of nearly 12%.

5. The brand awareness of Snapchat is estimated at 84% in the US. Of this 84% who know Snapchat, 36% indicated that they liked the brand, while 37% used it.

6. A semi-annual survey of 10,000 US teens has revealed that Snapchat is the favorite social platform among this age group. More than a third (35%) of the teen respondents favored Snapchat. TikTok is their second favorite app, while Instagram is in third spot.

7. There’s a slight difference in the distribution of Snapchat users by gender. It seems that the platform is more popular among women. Statista reports that, as of April 2022, 52.9% of users were female, and 46.3% were male.

8. The total time spent viewing Spotlight content increased by 59% year-on-year.

9. A survey completed in 2022 in the UK revealed that nearly three out of ten fashion and lifestyle consumers that use Snapchat spend anything between one and three hours per day on the platform.

10. Along with the rise in user count during 2021 and 2022, Snapchat also saw an increase in revenue generation. The Q2 2022 Financial Summary reveals that revenue increased by 13% to $1.111 million, compared to the previous year. This wasn’t enough to make Snapchat profitable, however, and its net loss was significantly higher ($422 million), compared to the previous year ($152 million).

15 LinkedIn Statistics

1. According to LinkedIn’s own statistics, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network, with more than 830 million users in over 200 countries and territories across the world.

2. The United States is the country with the most LinkedIn users. As of April 2022, there were 190 million users across the US. India has the second biggest network of users with 87 million.

3. While the US boasts the most LinkedIn users, the platform’s brand awareness in this country isn’t that impressive. According to Statista, it’s only 69%. What’s more, of this 69%, only 26% like the brand and less than 18% of US social media users in the US use it.

4. The potential audience that marketers can reach with ads on LinkedIn is estimated at just over 808 million. It’s a year-on-year increase of 11.1%.

5. The platform generated $3.8 billion in ad revenue in 2021. According to data shared by Statista, it’s expected to increase to $7.7 billion by 2026.

6. Across all age groups, LinkedIn is more popular among male users, according to the Digital 2022: Global Overview Report. As of January 2022, just over 57% of all its users worldwide were male.

7. The LinkedIn personal accounts with the most followers are: Bill Gates (about 35 million followers), Richard Branson (nearly 20 million followers), and Jeff Weiner (almost 11 million followers).

8. Each week, 50 million people use the platform to search for jobs.

9. Every second, 95 job applications get submitted, while 6 people get hired every minute on LinkedIn.

10. In addition to being popular among job seekers, it’s also used by companies for marketing. According to the platform’s most recent statistics, there are more than 58 million company profiles on the platform and 120,000 schools listed. Google, Amazon, and TED Conferences are the LinkedIn company accounts with the most followers. Each of these has over 22 million followers.

11. It’s also used by companies to find new talent. According to their own statistics, 40% of companies on LinkedIn use skills features to identify job candidates (there are nearly 40,000 skills listed).

12. Compared to Pinterest, LinkedIn has a much bigger workforce. According to their own data, they have 19,000 full-time employees and 36 offices in over 30 cities across the globe.

13. Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram aren’t the only social media networks where hashtags are used often. On LinkedIn, the hashtags with the most followers are: #India, #innovations, #management, #HumanResources, and #DigitalMarketing.

14. Wyzowl found that 68% of video marketers plan to include LinkedIn in their video marketing strategy. Compared to last year, only 63% planned to leverage the channel.

15. For LinkedIn, long-form content works best. OkDork found that the longer your posts are on LinkedIn, the better the results. Posts with word counts between 1,900 and 2,000 words performed better and got more engagement.

Wrapping Things Up

There are countless more statistics that prove the power of social media to brands and their marketing teams. Though, if we were to list them all, you would never get to be social, whether that’s online or in person.

Over the years there might have been a few changes regarding which platform is king, but the popularity of social media shouldn’t be questioned. Along with the changes in which platform reigns more supreme, there’s also been a shift in how social media users consume content and what type of content they prefer. With the emergence of platforms like TikTok and new features being introduced by other platforms, video is generating a lot of engagement nowadays. You just need to look at YouTube’s impressive stats to know that we love video…

As mentioned, it would be very interesting to see how these numbers will change over the next few years. The pandemic had a huge impact on how we go about work and social interactions. We started relying much more on social media platforms to complete both these tasks. You could say that it’s become an extension of ourselves — a huge part that we won’t be able to give up. And, if we do, that replacement still needs to be invented…

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