The new 2018 Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite reveals that there are now more than 4 billion people around the world using the internet.
That means well over half of the world’s population is now online, with the latest data showing that nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017.
But what does this mean for the world of social media?
Alongside internet usage, social media use also continues to grow rapidly. The number of people using the top platform in each country has increased by almost 1 million new users every day during the past 12 months. More than 3 billion people around the world now use social media each month, with nine in 10 of those users accessing their chosen platforms on mobile devices.
You’ll find the key insights from this year’s reports in our more detailed analysis below, but here are the essential headlines for digital in 2018:
- The number of social media users in 2018 is 3.196 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year
- The number of internet users in 2018 is 4.021 billion, up 7 percent year-on-year
- The number of mobile phone users in 2018 is 5.135 billion, up 4 percent year-on-year
Just before we dig into the key social media findings, we’d like to say a big thank you to the data partners making this year’s reports possible:
So, what does all of their valuable data tell us? Here are a few highlights.
11 new people start using social media every second
Almost 1 million people started using social media for the first time every day in 2017 — that’s equivalent to more than 11 new users every second.
The global number of people using social media has grown by 13 percent in the past 12 months, with Central and Southern Asia recording the fastest gains (up 90 percent and 33 percent respectively).
Saudi Arabia has posted the fastest individual country growth rate across our 40 focus economies at 32 percent, but India is only just behind (31 percent annual growth in social media users).
As part of this growth, we’re seeing larger numbers of older users joining social media too. On Facebook alone, the number of users aged 65 and above has increased by almost 20 percent in the past 12 months.
The number of teenagers using Facebook has also increased, but the…
