Social Media Usage Rises, Records 266 Million New Users in One Year

…Social Media Users Hits 5.04 Billion

Social media users have grown by 5.6 percent over the past year, with 266 million new users in 2023 equating to an average increase of 8.4 new users every single second.

There are 5.04 billion social media users at the start of 2024, equating to 62.3 percent of the world’s total population.

The top headline in DataReportal’s huge Digital 2024 Global Overview Report is that active social media user identities have passed the 5 billion mark.

Kepios’s analysis of the latest data from around the world shows that the cumulative total of active users on the top platform in each country reached 5.04 billion by the start of 2024.

And while this “user identities” figure may not equate to unique, human individuals, it still marks a momentous milestone on social media’s journey.

Social Media Use Continues to Grow

Social media user identities have increased by 266 million over the past twelve months, delivering year-on-year growth of 5.6 percent.

On average, that equates to almost 730,000 new user identities every day during 2023, at a rate of 8.4 new users every single second.

And despite the fact that social media growth has slowed considerably since the surges that we saw during the early days of Covid-19 lockdowns, user growth actually maintained the more elevated momentum we saw for most of 2023 during the last three months of the year.

Our analysis shows that social media user identities increased by 1.5 percent between October and December, thanks to an additional 75 million new users.

And these figures suggest that growth in the final quarter of 2023 was actually higher than the average for the year as a whole, with increases averaging 9.4 new users every second over those final three months of the year.