Social Media Usage Statistics 2026

Kepios ’s analysis of the latest data published by the top social media platforms indicates that there are now 5.66 billion active “social media user identities” at a worldwide level, which equates to 68.7 percent of the total global population.

For perspective, Kepios’s analysis indicates that its social media user identities figure equates to 93.8 percent of all the world’s internet users (regardless of age), whereas GWI’s survey data indicates that 96.9 percent of internet users aged 16 and above use at least one social platform each month.

Indeed, on a year-on-year basis, our research indicates that social media user identities have increased by 259 million since October 2024, resulting in worldwide annual growth of 4.8 percent .

Kepios analysis indicates that social media user identities stood at just under 2.27 billion in October 2015, when the global “adoption” rate was equal to 30.3 percent.

Kepios analysis of ad reach data published by the world’s largest social media platforms indicates that 54.4 percent of social media users around the world are male, compared with just 45.6 percent for women.

Family daily active people (DAP) was 3.64 billion on average for September 2026, an increase of 3% year-over-year.

Global Monthly Active Users ("MAUs") increased 10% year over year to 661 million.

Daily Active Uniques (“DAUq”) increased 12% year-over-year to 130.3 million

Weekly Active Uniques (“WAUq”) increased 16% year-over-year to 515.2 million

We had 493 million DAUs on average in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 23 million, or 5%, from the second quarter of 2025.

Telephone or video calls were used by 76% of individuals in the EU, while 67% reported participating in social networks.

For example, the latest quarter-on-quarter figures put average monthly growth at 20.5 million, while the annual growth figure puts the average closer to 21.5 million new user identities per month.

Instagram reached 2 billion daily actives.

Threads crossed 500 million monthly actives, making it the fastest growing conversation app ever.

Lastly, we've surpassed 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers globally, including trials.

The vast majority of U.S. adults (84%) say they ever use YouTube.

Most Americans (71%) also report using Facebook.

TikTok: 37% of U.S. adults report using the platform, which is slightly up from last year and up from 21% in 2021.

About a quarter (24%) say they are daily users of TikTok.

TikTok is now the most-used social media platform among Americans ages 12-34, preferred by 29% of that group.

Facebook is used most often by 40% of social media users and is dominant among those 55 and older.

Nine in ten Americans age 12+ have ever used YouTube; 84% use YouTube monthly and 78% use YouTube weekly

For perspective, Kepios's analysis indicates that its social media user identities figure equates to 93.8 percent of all the world's internet users (regardless of age), whereas GWI's survey data indicates that 96.9 percent of internet users aged 16 and above use at least one social platform each month.

For initial context, the latest research from GWI reveals that online adults now use an average of 6.75 different social media platforms each month.

YouTube (69% this year) and Facebook (67%) have been neck and neck for the past five years.

The share of teens who say they are on TikTok almost constantly ticked up slightly to 21% this year, from 16% in 2022.

Across these five platforms, 36% of teens use at least one of these sites almost constantly.

Overall, 77.0% of students reported frequent social media use, with observed differences by sex, sexual identity, and racial and ethnic identity.

Frequent social media use was more prevalent among female students compared with male students (81.8% versus 72.9%).

Meanwhile, GWI's data also indicates that online adults spend an average of more than 1 hour per day browsing social networks like Facebook and X.

Moreover, if we add video-centric platforms like YouTube and TikTok into this mix, daily average consumption jumps to well over 2½ hours per day , resulting in a weekly average of 18 hours and 36 minutes per user.

GWI's data indicates that women aged 16 to 24 spend an average of 25 hours and 45 minutes per week scrolling social and video feeds, which equates to an average of more than 3 hours and 40 minutes each day.

Roughly half of teens (48%) say these sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022.

More teens report spending too much time on social media: 45% of teens say they spend too much time on social media in our current survey, up from 36% in 2022.

Teen girls are more likely than boys to say social media hurt their mental health (25% vs. 14%), confidence (20% vs. 10%) or sleep (50% vs. 40%).

Findings In this cohort study of 4285 US adolescents, 31.3% had increasing addictive use trajectories for social media and 24.6% for mobile phones over 4 years.

16 January 2026: eSafety reports that age-restricted platforms removed access to 4.7 million under-16 accounts across Australia by mid-December 2025.

As of 2026, more than half of U.S. adults (59%) say they get news from social media at least sometimes, up slightly compared with the last few years.

Facebook and YouTube continue to outpace all other social media sites when it comes to news consumption: 40% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Facebook, and 34% say the same about YouTube.

Though it has been the case in some individual countries for several years, at the global level (averaging across 48 markets) social media and video networks are for the first time the single most widely used way of accessing online news (used by 54% of all respondents), ahead of news organisations’ own websites and apps (51%).

Globally, 30% of people now say social media and video networks are their main source of news – up from 22% five years ago.

The proportion of people now only using social media and video networks for news has risen to 12% this year (doubling from 6% in 2020)

Globally, more than half (52%) of respondents aged 18–24 now say that social media, video networks, and AI chatbots are their main way of getting news.

Around a quarter (27%) of respondents globally get some news from news-focused individual creators or influencers, and almost half (46%) get some news from creators of any type.

Facebook remains the biggest platform overall for news consumption (used by 43% this year), reversing recent declines.

TikTok (growing fastest from a small base, used by 20% globally for news) and Instagram (more modest growth, but a more significant presence – 26% usage for news) are the fastest growing video-led networks and they are driving much of the change together with YouTube (34% for news).