Biggest social media platforms by users 2025 | Statista
www.statista.com
Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with more than one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms Most top-ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ, or video-sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin’s popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network, TikTok. How many people use social media? The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2026, social networking sites are estimated to reach 5.75 billion users, and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

Why YSK:

Although politicians and journalists often treat it like major platform, or even the “digital town square,” X is fairly minor social media platform. The various Meta platforms (including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger) have combined 10 billion monthly active users. X (Twitter) is about 5.5% that size. It trails behind not only the obvious giants like Meta, Google (YouTube) and TikTok (Douyin), but also well behind platforms that are exclusive to one country or region, like WeChat or Weibo, and behind “also-rans” like Snapchat, Reddit, and Pinterest.

X is not a major platform. It has continued to struggle with outages, trolling, user exodus, and now a little more than an Internet ghost town.

    • joe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      121·
      3 months ago

      The only “social network” my teenager has asked permission to make an account on is Pinterest.

      I was a little confused at the request, because in my mind Pinterest was a defunct site that no one used, but apparently it’s popular with at least some of the younger generation.

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        3 months ago

        I’ve come around slightly on Pinterest. Not fully–it’s still vapid and there’s a lot of attempted lock-in–but there is some good stuff on there, and its attempt at curating creativity is kind of refreshing.

    • FellowEnt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I assumed it was a dying platform but then I found out why it’s so popular again - kids uae it as a backdoor to access TikTok/Youtube shortform content.

  • Bleys@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    For some reason Twitter specifically is like black tar heroin to politicians. Even post-Musk, left wing politicians like AOC and Bernie are still giga active on the platform.

  • bandanawearingbanana@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    3 months ago

    Good riddance honestly.

    Even when Jack was managing that shithole it was still a shithole. Magnitudes better than the nuclear wasteland it is now but a shithole none the less.

    Btw the embeddedscience.org article you linked is, at least partly Ai generated. …

  • ccunning@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    Pinterest is a social network?
    I kind of feel the same about YouTube, but I do know they have comments at least…

  • boaratio@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    3 months ago

    I interviewed at a company in San Francisco that split an office space with Pinterest, and I casually asked during the interview if anyone actually uses Pinterest and the HR person said that the company I was interviewing with was moving to another location because Pinterest bought the entire building. This was a huge building in downtown San Francisco. I still don’t know who uses Pinterest, but apparently a lot of people use it.

  • tidderuuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Is there any actual 3rd party verification of the users or is it just “trust me bro!”?

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      These things are notoriously difficult to measure accurately, but this is from Statistica Statista, which has a reputation for pretty good metrics. At the very least, one would expect their metrics to be comparable across the analysis, if not necessarily a perfect measure of absolute numbers.

      Edit: thanks for catching the typo.

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    It’s the accessibility factor that’s important. It’s called the “digital town square” not just because of the user count (which isn’t high compared to Facebook or Whatsapp) but because of how easy it is to access. Musk’s changed that and now you need to log in to see some (all?) xeets, but… most of the social media on that chart requires login and/or app, I think reddit is the most notable exception (or was, now they also require login to use the web frontend I guess). But then reddit requires you to actually click on the posts, which is more effort, whereas xitter just shows you everything in your feed, so if a politician or celebrity’s xeet is in it, you’re seeing it.

    Idk, there’s just something about it that screams it’s better for announcements and such than most other social media platforms.

  • cheeseburger@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Twitter has American politicians, celebrities, press, and corporations, as well as world leaders and they all still use it to blabber publicly, so it doesn’t need to cater the the proles.