As of July 2020, more than half of all the people on Earth use social media. Our latest data show that 3.96 billion people across the planet use social media today, equating to almost 51 percent of the total global population.
Put simply, that means that more people use social media today than do not.
This milestone is all the more impressive when we consider that most social media companies restrict use of their platforms to people aged 13 and above. In fact, the latest numbers indicate that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the world’s total ‘eligible’ population now uses social media.
Adoption is still growing rapidly, too. Worldwide user numbers have surged by more than 10 percent over the past 12 months, with an average of more than 1 million people starting to use social media for the first time every single day since this time last year.
With more than 376 million new users since July 2019, that translates to almost 12 new users every second, suggesting that user numbers are growing even faster today than they were at the start of 2020.
The typical user has an account on almost 9 different social media platforms, and spends an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes using social media each day. That figure varies considerably across cultures, however, with people in the Philippines spending close to 4 hours per day on social media, while people in Japan spend an average of just 46 minutes per day using social platforms.