Hootsuite, global leader in social media management, et We Are Social, international social web creative agency, have published the update of the 2022 digital report. Data from the last quarter also shows a large number of new users.
Social media adoption and usage continues to rise. As the UN reveals that 7,98 billion people live on Earth in July 2022, there are now 5,34 billion mobile phone users worldwide, smartphones representing nearly four out of five mobile phones used today. The number of mobiles worldwide has increased by 93 million since this time last year. Nearly 67% of the world's population now uses a mobile phone. The number of Internet users has increased by 3,7% in the last 12 months, to reach 5,03 billion in July 2022. Finally, the number of social media users increased by 227 million in the past year, to reach 4,7 billion at the beginning of July 2022. This represents an increase of more than 5% over the last 12 months. 59% of the world's population uses social media. The number of users continues to increase every quarter. In July 2022, ces 4,7 billion social media users meant an increase of 1,1% since the last update of the study in April. We also see that in 2022, 45,7% of social media users are women and 54,3% of men. This parity is observed throughout the world, with a few exceptions, like in Africa and South Asia where men are the majority on social networks. In North American countries and Europe, women are even more numerous. In addition, the study reveals that 93,6% of Internet users use social networks and they spend an average of 2 hours 29 minutes there per day.
Use social networks to find out about current events
Social media is used for many reasons and purposes. So, 47,6% of users use social media to stay in touch with family or friends, 34,8% use this channel to find out about current events or 22,5% for professional needs. Social networks have become an important source of news information for many users around the world.. This channel is the third way to get information on the internet : 57% of the population use social media to get information, 82% get information from online channels and 61% watch television. As expected, the 2022 digital report reveals that young adults are more likely to turn to social media for information than their parents' generation. Nearly two-thirds of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they use social media as a source of information, compared to less than half of respondents aged 55 and over.
Facebook remains the most used platform
Among social media, Facebook is the most used platform for information (44% of users), followed by YouTube (30 %), then Whatsapp (22 %). Furthermore, the number of respondents saying they use TikTok for news has almost doubled since last year. It goes from 4% in the 2021 digital report to 7% in this year’s study. In addition, if we are interested in the most followed pages on Facebook, we see that certain media are part of the largest communities. In the ranking of the most followed pages in the world, we find the media CGTN, Chinese state television channel, in sixth place with 118 million subscribers, followed by China Daily with 105 million in fifteenth place. In comparison, CNN, who is the media with the most subscribers on Twitter, is only 19th in Facebook's ranking of all accounts with 59 million followers.
An Internet user uses on average 7,5 social networks
There are many social networks, and on average worldwide, each Internet user uses 7,5 social media. This figure varies depending on the gender and age of the Internet user.. Report reveals 16-24 year olds use eight platforms (8,1 for women and 7,9 for men). On the other hand, among 45-64 year olds, the average is six social media per person. The social network with the most active users in the world remains Facebook with 2,9 billion people, followed by YouTube with 2,4 billion. TikTok ranks sixth with one billion users. Latest figures released to ByteDance Advertising Resources reveal that TikTok ads now reach over 1 billion people aged 18 and over. TikTok continues to attract new users at an impressive rate, thereby increasing its global advertising reach by 52 million people (+ 5,4 %) in the last three months only. This means TikTok is gaining over half a million new users every day. Ads on Tiktok mainly affect women (22,8 %) from 18 to 24 years old, as well as men in this same age group (16,9 %). The largest number of people affected by these ads are in the United States, in Indonesia and Brazil.
