One of the most recent breakthroughs in the last few years and a couple of decades has been the emergence of Social media. Initially, one of the core aims of coming up with social media was to connect people and makes the world a Global village in a true sense. And as the times have passed there is no doubt that social media has cut across cultures and geographies and has brought the entire world over a platform where they can interact and share ideas, beliefs, and can know each other in a much better way. This was almost unthinkable a few decades back that a musician sitting across seas and oceans in some continent can get a popular overnight in another continent within a matter of few days.
The world around us is changing rapidly and indeed dramatically. In this blog, we will take a look at how the social media users are projected to increase in the coming few years, how much is their penetration, which social media apps and websites have grabbed the highest share and we will also see the projected numbers for few countries. So let’s get started.
Number of Social media Users
Social media gives individuals a medium to express their thoughts, emotions and beliefs in a way it was never possible before. Earlier, the means of communications were one-way in which either the Government agencies and institutions or the media outlets were able to convey the thoughts, news, actions unidirectionally and users feedback was not very much instant. But Social media has completely changed this equation, and now irrespective of social standings, individuals can voice their opinions there are some downsides too of this freedom and liberty and there have been wide-ranging debates as to how to regulate them, we will try to take a look on some of those reasons too in this Blog.
Now let’s get to the number of users who are actively using social media all over the world. In the year 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using different social media platforms worldwide.
In 2021, this number climbed to 3.83 billion and showed an increase of 5% over the previous year.
In 2022, the number of social media users is projected to rise to 4.01 Billion, which is an estimated 4.7% increase over the year 2021.
The numbers for the next two years also has some heartening results as the number of social media users is projected to rise in a similar trajectory. In the year 2023, the number is set to climb by around 4.5% over 2022 numbers and is set to increase to 4.19 Billion.
For the year 2024, we estimated that number of social media users might climb to 4.33 Billion and that is a 3.3 percent rise over 2023 numbers. In effect, if we compare the number of social media users from 2020 and 2024 over 5 years, the number is expected to see a huge climb.
Social Media Penetration
Social media penetration refers to the fraction of the population worldwide who use different social media applications. Here also the penetration percentage is set to rise. For social media penetration too, we have projected the percentage till the year 2024.
To start with the base year 2020, 48.3% of people globally were estimated to be using one or the other social media applications.
In 2021, the percentage was estimated to be around 50.3%. So, we saw in plain percentage terms a 2 point rise just in 2 years. The projected numbers for 2022, 2023 and 2024 also shows promising results.
For the year 2022, the percentage population worldwide who will be using some social media applications is set to climb to 52.1 per cent, approximately a 1.8 percentage point rise from 2021 levels.
Similarly, for the year 2023, the percentage is estimated to climb to 53.8 per cent and for the year 2024, the fraction of the population worldwide is estimated to rise to 55.3% all over.
Top 4 Social Media Platforms Users
There are various social media platforms that have been operating today and some of the most prominent ones include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, TikTok similarly there has been a serious mushrooming of social media platforms all over the world.
We will see the number of users using the top 4 social media applications as of now. The highest number of users has been bagged by Facebook with an estimated number of 2898 million worldwide, with India being the biggest market for Facebook with an estimated number of 351 million.
The second number is occupied by the video streaming giant YouTube, owned and managed by Google. The estimated number of people using Youtube at present is 2297 million.
The third spot is bagged by the messaging platform, WhatsApp owned and operated by the Parent Company Facebook and now named Meta. It is estimated that approximately 2021 million people worldwide have been using WhatsApp.
The fourth spot is occupied by Instagram, again managed by the parent company Facebook with a user base of 1312 million users worldwide.
So in essence, we can see here that Facebook, now named Meta occupies the highest share of social media users worldwide. There have been various reasons for the popularity of Facebook as one of the top social media giants like the unique product and the time it was launched there was no real competitor of Facebook due to the unique nature of the product that Facebook was able to launch and the second reason has been the innovative nature of Facebook as a company. Youtube has been so popular because of the seamless streaming experience that it offers and also one of the most prominent reasons has been the parent company Google.
The countrywide distribution of Social media users
In this Blog, till now we have seen the Total number of social media users all over the world at present and the future numbers which we project to rise to, then we saw the penetration percentage of social media users all over the world as a fraction of total population, then we also saw the top-performing social media applications and their estimated user base, now let’s go to one more crucial data, the country-wise distribution of social media users. We will see the present number of social media users and projected and estimated numbers for the year 2024. We will see the numbers for three countries namely India, China and the United States.
The highest number of social media users are in China, where the number of social media users was estimated to be around 999 million in the year 2020 and is set to rise to 1166 million in 2024 showing a 16% rise.
The second-highest number of social media users are present in India where at present 639 million people have been using different social media applications in the year 2020, and it is set to increase by 44% to 924 million users in 2024.
The third highest market is the United States, wherein the year 2020, the estimated number of social media users was 295 million and is set to climb by 5% to 312 million users.
The crux of the projected numbers is that India is one of the most promising markets in the coming years. The user base is expected to rise by approximately 44%, and this has been possible due to a variety of reasons like the growing young population, increasing internet penetration and the cheap data that has been available in the past few years. There has been some rising concern too regarding the use of social media as various groups allege that social media companies are not moderating the content and that acts a fuel for inflaming hatred among the communities and there have been some concerns too regarding the efficacy of algorithms and safety of Data. But there is no doubt that the pros outweigh the cons and there is a need to have some better regulation rather than control as it will defeat the very purpose of social media applications. Like in European Union, General Data Protection Regulations have come in and in other developing countries like India too, Data protection laws and regulations are under discussion, and we hope that this will lead to better regulations and will ultimately result in making social media a much safer and better place for people all around the world.
