Global Social Media Statistics Global Digital Insights

The platform attracts users seeking alternatives to traditional corporate-controlled social networks. While far from its peak popularity that it once had, MySpace still continues to operate, but on a smaller yet significant user base. It is now a music-focused platform where artists can promote their work and connect with fans. The platform is an important chapter in social media history, and for now, it is doing an excellent job of maintaining music communities alive. Threads is Meta’s attempt to capture users seeking Twitter alternatives.

RedNote has gained international attention in light of uncertainty around platforms like TikTok, with some creators exploring it as a new content channel. It’s also one of the most trusted sources of peer-to-peer product reviews in China. Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok — developed by ByteDance and launched before its global counterpart. If the interface feels familiar, that’s because Douyin is the original app that inspired TikTok’s global rollout — the two share a core codebase, but operate on completely separate networks. WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, used in over 180 countries by around 3 billion people every month. A platform with billions of users sounds impressive, but if your audience isn't there, it won't matter how big it is.

In a About Wingtalks CRC 2023 national study of this age group, researchers found that 55% of them had experienced cyberbullying to the detriment of their self-worth. Social media sites provide opportunities for individuals to connect with friends, family, and like-minded individuals, even across geographical distances. These connections help maintain relationships and interests, fostering a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and support in users. When the internet entered daily life around 1983, worldwide connections became an instant possibility.

That makes it ideal for brands and creators who want to listen before posting and engage with communities thoughtfully. TikTok has quickly become the leading short-form video content platform, especially among younger audiences. With around 3 billion monthly active users, it’s especially popular with millennials and Gen Z. Pinterest is a visual discovery platform for people to pin (save) images, videos, and GIFs to virtual pin boards.

I am very much thankful & satisfied with their service & results that I am getting. Kalshi is currently embroiled in a string of lawsuits in states that have accused the company of operating an illegal gambling business. “Why couldn't you use this as a side job or a full-time job to trade on something that you're really good at? Using that knowledge to bet on markets that are not typically male-dominated can be empowering and even lucrative for women, she said. Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket responded to questions from The Independent for this article.

Social platforms host community trade groups, barter pages, garage sale days, and nonprofit events. These sites do on a large scale what local community bulletin boards traditionally have done. The launch of Friendster® in 2002 expanded the concept of networking occupied by email groups and virtual bulletin boards. Also in 2002, LinkedIn® established a social media site for professional and business networking. As Surfshark notes, that means multiple generations of 1.6 billion people are cut off from social media.

Reasons For Using Social Media

If you’re a writer or creator, your goal shouldn’t be “be everywhere.” You should use the platforms where your work actually fits (and where you’ll keep showing up). Most platforms block bots using tricks like IP tracking, JavaScript rendering, and browser fingerprinting. To get around this, data collection often requires headless browsers and rotating proxies. Douban is China’s primary platform for cultural discussion and criticism. The platform brings in a lot of intellectually oriented users looking for in-depth discussions about this type of creative work. WhatsApp has become an almost “de facto standard in communication” in many countries, particularly across Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Social media’s range is global, with its scope of topic and type of user virtually unlimited. Social media includes internet sites such as Meta’s Facebook® and Instagram®, X® (formerly Twitter), YouTube®, Yelp®, and countless blogs. Discord offers real-time messaging, voice chat, video calls, and deep customization for brands looking to build close-knit audiences. LinkedIn is the leading professional networking platform, originally built for job seekers and recruiters — but now just as valuable for creators, small business owners, and brands.

If your audience is not in China, or they’re older and have a higher income, then you’re better off with WeChat. Also, the United States potentially banning TikTok due to data concerns has been a popular topic since 2020, so if privacy is a chief concern of yours, keep this in mind. Owned by Tencent, the parent company of QQ and QZone, this app does a little bit of everything.

The very first step of the process is selecting a network-optimized size for your image from a drop-down menu. We go into more detail for every single network below, but this image includes the social media image sizes you probably look up most often. Buying social media marketing tools can help you reach your goals easily. To help make things easier, we’ve put together a guide to getting started with QQTube. She maintains that she uses her platform to “educate” women about how prediction markets operate, adding that it was important that influencers are “careful” in how they promote the sites. Users should do their research instead of “blindly” making bets in areas they know nothing about, Parker said.

Subreddits also have specific topics, such as technology, politics or music. With over 50,000+ happy customers and verified reviews left on every service, our customer satisfaction speaks for itself! Check out the ratings and reviews on each service to learn more about how they perform and streamline the decision making process. “Prediction markets are good and if you promote them, you need to promote them with the fact that you need your education and you need your research to use them,” she said. “Otherwise, you know, it's just Juul,” Parker said, referring to the scandal that hit the vaping company for contributing to the rise in teen vaping. The @Polybaddies feed consists largely of reposts from Gen Z influencers promoting the site, where they shared selfies in Polymarket t-shirts and baseball caps.

Who Shouldn’t Use Twitter?

As a result, this widespread change in communication has enabled a dramatic shift in information sharing and acquisition of knowledge that, in turn, affected lifestyles and social mores. Social media has become a complex phenomenon because it is much more than individuals exchanging words. Social media sites – the venues where communications happen – are controlled by their platform owners. Smaller shares of Americans regularly get news on Instagram (20%), TikTok (20%) or X, formerly known as Twitter (12%).

Unlike other social media platforms that use a follower-based approach, Reddit resembles a collection of traditional forums. This unique structure lets users find and connect with communities built around shared interests to foster deeper engagement within these specific niches. Most social media platforms that survived the last decade have shifted significantly in what they offer users. Twitter, for example, didn’t allow users to upload videos or images initially. Since 2011 this has been possible, and today, more than 50% of the content viewed on Twitter includes images and videos. Social media platforms are online networks or apps where users create and share content, connect with others, and engage in communities.

Threads launched in July 2023 as Meta's response to Twitter and achieved the fastest user growth of any consumer app in history in its first week. It is integrated with Instagram and positions itself as a place for public conversation in a more positive and less combative environment than X. Threads is still establishing its identity and algorithm, which makes it an interesting early-mover opportunity for brands and creators building an audience in a less saturated space. Tumblr is a multimedia-based microblogging platform popular among creatives. Users generally share posts about art, poetry, fandoms, and niche interests. All information shared via this account type goes into the users’ subscriptions folder instead of showing up via push notifications.

Employees are already way ahead of the C-suite’s expectations for incorporating AI into their daily tasks. And 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investment even more over the next 3 years. This report breaks down 18 shifts reshaping discovery, trust, and culture.

Sports betting remains the most lucrative stream of revenue for prediction markets, their core base typically being younger men. A recent survey found that 26 percent of young men reported using at least one sports betting platform, including prediction markets, in the last six months. The key takeaway from this great data is that marketers don’t need to be on all platforms at the same time in order to reach the majority of their audiences. In GWI’s Q survey, 56.9 percent of adult internet users aged 16 and above reported using Facebook within the past month, which puts the platform 1.5 percentage points ahead of its nearest rival. Successful brand creators are becoming influencers in their own right and materially impacting brand performance. For small business owners who also serve as a social team of one, 65% say they are becoming social media content creators.

• Despite LinkedIn’s global dominance, Xing still maintains a strong regional presence.
• Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform originally incubated by Twitter and launched as an independent app in 2023.
• TikTok has quickly become the leading short-form video content platform, especially among younger audiences.
• Brands often use it to create chatbots, offer real-time customer support, and send regular updates.

“I don't consider prediction markets gambling,” said the 25-year-old, who is one of a growing number of young women encouraging the demographic to join the prediction market hype. Debate is currently raging as to whether prediction markets constitute gambling or if they are the same as investing. It is run by an influencer whom Kalshi has paid to promote the platform, according to the WSJ, which first reported on the account. GWI’s survey reveals that messaging friends and family is a particularly popular topic on Facebook, but that TikTok users aren’t really all that interested in this functionality.

The social media platform integrates entertainment features like games and music streaming. QQ has been able to stay afloat thanks to its impressive entertainment ecosystem. When selecting a social media platform, businesses should consider their target audience, the nature of their content, and their marketing goals.

It’s a well-established way to get people talking about a campaign. Coors took this to the extreme in 2025 with their massive “refershment” ads leading up to the Case of the Mondays campaign. We analyzed audience sentiments towards AI-generated content vs. AI slop to help you answer this question.

Quora is a question-and-answer platform where experts and knowledgeable individuals answer questions on virtually any topic. Content on Quora ranks well in Google Search, making it a valuable source of organic traffic for topics that see ongoing search interest. For professionals and brands in knowledge-intensive industries, writing high-quality Quora answers is a legitimate thought leadership and visibility strategy. Quora Ads also offer interest and topic-based targeting for advertising.

Despite LinkedIn’s global dominance, Xing still maintains a strong regional presence. Medium is a popular platform that bridges social media and traditional publishing. It allows anyone to publish articles while providing discovery mechanisms through topics and curation. The platform attracts writers and thought leaders sharing in-depth content. Its focus is on organizing discussions around specific topics or interests. Despite competition from newer social platforms, Tieba is still important for niche communities and in-depth discussions on specialized subjects.

Developed by Chinese tech giant Tencent, WeChat is one of the most versatile social media platforms in the world. Originally a messaging app, WeChat has grown into an all-in-one platform where users can send messages, make payments, shop online, book rides, and more. Instagram is one of the most visual social media platforms, built for sharing photos, videos, stories, and short-form video content like reels. Reddit is organized into thousands of topic-based communities called subreddits, covering every imaginable interest from personal finance to niche hobbies to breaking news. It is a platform built around honest peer recommendations, genuine debate, and community knowledge-sharing. For brands, Reddit requires careful handling — its users are highly allergic to obvious advertising and will reject inauthentic brand presence.

It is a kind of gathering point for that audience to share anything from anime, creative content, to even gaming. Often called the “Twitter of China,” Weibo is the primary platform for public discourse and news sharing in China. Similar to Twitter, Weibo also plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and cultural trends. But still, it also provides a space for real-time news and social commentary. Snapchat is the pioneer of ephemeral content and augmented reality filters.

Billions are using these tools, from global giants like Facebook to regional favorites like WeChat, to connect and share daily. As a guide, we have collated the leading social media platforms and an overview of their active users, their core audience, and the types of businesses that might find them most useful. 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. According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025.

This content and messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord are growing and popular and worth keeping an eye on throughout 2025. “They’ve been really aggressive on social media trying to create these online communities of young women,” Pempus, the former managing editor of sports betting at Forbes, said of prediction markets. Hootsuite benchmarking data shows that brands are posting on most social media platforms at least once a day, and more than that on Instagram, Facebook, and X. Creators post so often that they have to assure fans they’re okay after a couple days’ absence. Excessive use of social media platforms and their contribution to poor mental health, especially in young people, may be cause for concern. These numbers are huge – in 2019, there were 7.7 billion people worldwide, with at least 3.5 billion online.