Social Media Statistics (2026): 71 Sourced Figures

This page collects figures on who uses social media, how much time they spend on it and how much money the platforms earn. Every number links to the document that first published it. The audience figures come from Pew Research Center, the UK regulator Ofcom and the EU statistics office Eurostat. The scam figures come from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The platform figures come from earnings releases and SEC filings. One survey from a software vendor is included and labeled. Teams that publish to several networks can compare scheduling and reporting products in the StatWharf comparison of social media management tools.

Key figures at a glance

Which platforms American adults use

Pew Research Center asks a national sample of US adults which platforms they ever use. The 2025 survey covered 5,022 adults from February 5 to June 18, 2025. It was run by SSRS by web, mail and phone. Pew notes that the survey mode changed in 2023, so older phone results are not fully comparable.

TikTok grew fastest over the series. Pew first measured it in 2021 at 21% of US adults. The 2025 share of 37% is up from 33% in 2024. YouTube and Facebook changed little over the same period.

Age shapes platform choice more than any other factor. Among adults aged 18 to 29, 80% use Instagram and 63% use TikTok. Among adults aged 65 and over, the Instagram share falls to 19%. YouTube reaches 95% of adults aged 18 to 29 and 64% of those aged 65 and over. Facebook is the exception. It reaches between 57% and 80% of every age group.

Gender also matters for some platforms. Pew found that 78% of women and 63% of men use Facebook. Women are also more likely to use Instagram and TikTok. Men are more likely to use Reddit and X.

Social media as a news source

Pew measures news use on social media in a separate survey. The 2025 wave covered US adults from August 18 to 24, 2025.

Pew describes the overall share as roughly stable over the last few years. Instagram matches TikTok as a regular news source for 20% of adults. Reddit is a regular news source for 9%.

Teens and social media

Pew surveyed 1,458 US teens aged 13 to 17 from September 25 to October 9, 2025. Ipsos ran the survey through its KnowledgePanel. The report was published on December 9, 2025.

YouTube is used by roughly nine in ten teens, and Pew reports that about three quarters use it every day. Facebook was once the main teen platform. It reached 71% of teens in 2014-15, against 31% in 2025. X fell from 23% in 2022 to 16% in 2025. The share of teens on TikTok almost constantly rose from 16% in 2022 to 21%.

Social media in the United Kingdom

Ofcom publishes the Online Nation report each year. The 2025 edition was published on 10 December 2025. Time figures cover personal use of smartphones, tablets and computers and exclude TV sets.

Ofcom reports that Alphabet and Meta services now take more than half of the time people in the UK spend online. Daily time online rose by 10 minutes from the previous year. Children aged 8 to 14 spend about 48 minutes a day on YouTube. Together with Snapchat, that is about half of their time online. Among 13 to 17 year olds who use social media and messaging apps, 72% say the apps help them feel closer to friends. Of children aged 8 to 17 who spent money online, 43% regretted purchases made on social media.

Social media in the European Union

Eurostat measures social network participation in its annual survey on ICT use in households. The indicator counts people who created a user profile, posted messages or made other contributions to social networks such as Facebook. Values below are shares of all individuals, as published.

Women in the EU were slightly more likely than men to take part. The 2025 share was 69.0% for women and 65.48% for men aged 16 to 74. Participation drops sharply after age 55. Among people aged 25 to 34 the share was 85.53%.

Platform audiences and revenue

Listed platforms report their own user counts and revenue each quarter. Each company defines its user metric differently. Meta counts people across its family of apps. Reddit counts daily unique visitors it can identify. Pinterest counts monthly users. Snap counts daily users. The figures below cannot be added together or compared one to one.

Advertising is still the main business. Meta’s advertising revenue rose from $46,563 million in Q2 2025 to $59,363 million in Q2 2026. The average price per ad rose 12% year over year. Reddit ad revenue was $762 million of its $805 million total. YouTube ads revenue was $9,796 million a year earlier. Alphabet reported 13% growth in YouTube ads.

User growth is uneven by region. Snap’s North America daily active users fell from 98 million to 92 million between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026. Its Rest of World users rose from 271 million to 303 million. Pinterest had 106 million monthly active users in the US and Canada and 377 million in Rest of World. Average revenue per user in the US and Canada was $8.30, against $0.23 in Rest of World. Reddit’s US revenue was $638 million in Q2 2026.

LinkedIn reported that revenue rose 12% year over year in the quarter ended June 2026. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions revenue grew 16%, its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Time spent on content grew 10% year over year.

Scams that start on social media

The FTC collects fraud reports through the Consumer Sentinel Network. Its April 27, 2026 Data Spotlight covers reports from 2025. The FTC notes that most scams are not reported, so real losses are likely higher. Reports were also not collected during the 2025 government shutdown.

The FTC describes the 2025 total as an eightfold increase since 2020. Shopping scams were the most reported type. More than 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media said it started with an order from an ad. People reported more money lost to scams that started on Facebook than on any other platform.

How consumers use social media to shop and search

The figures below come from a software vendor and are labeled as such. Sprout Social surveyed 2,280 social media users in the US, UK and Australia from April 23 to May 5, 2025. Sprout Social sells social media management software.

Among Gen Z respondents, the share whose purchases were influenced by social content rose to 90%. The sample is not a probability sample like the Pew and Eurostat surveys. The results describe the respondents only. They are not national estimates.

Method

• Data window. Figures date from 2025 to 2026. Pew and Ofcom figures come from their latest editions at the check date. Company figures cover the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Older values appear only as comparisons published in the same source.
• Primary sources only. Each figure links to the body that first published it. These are Pew Research Center, Ofcom, Eurostat, the FTC, company earnings releases and SEC filings, and the LinkedIn newsroom. Statistics aggregators, roundups and articles that re-quote figures were not used. The one vendor survey is labeled as vendor-reported with the vendor named.
• Checks. StatWharf Editorial opened each source in October 2026 and checked that the figure and its date appear there. Eurostat values were read from the Eurostat data API for the named datasets. Figures not found on a primary source were left out. This includes the year-by-year FTC loss series for 2020 to 2024 and the full Sprout Social Index report, which requires a form to download.
• No modeling. The page reports published figures only. No value is estimated or calculated by StatWharf. Chart bar lengths are scaled to the largest value shown.
• Different measures. Pew counts adults who ever use a platform. Eurostat counts people who created a profile or posted on a social network. Platforms count active accounts or users by their own definitions. Comparisons are valid within one source, not across sources.

What the figures show

Three points stand out. First, reach is concentrated in a few platforms. YouTube and Facebook reach most US adults, and Ofcom finds that Alphabet and Meta services take more than half of UK online time. Meta alone reported 3.60 billion daily active people in June 2026.

Second, age decides where an audience is. Instagram and TikTok reach most US adults under 30 but few over 65. In the EU, participation falls from about nine in ten people aged 16 to 24 to about one in three aged 65 to 74.

Third, social media is a commercial channel with real risk. Platform ad revenue keeps growing, and the FTC recorded $2.1 billion in reported scam losses that started on social media in 2025. Brands that run several accounts across these networks need a way to schedule posts, answer messages and report results in one place. Products for that job are compared on the StatWharf page for social media management tools. Other StatWharf data pages are listed in the research directory. Send corrections to any figure to the editorial address below.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.