In 2019-2020, the top three social media sites that experienced the most traffic were Facebook with 2.9 Billion users monthly, YouTube with 2.2 Billion users monthly, and finally WhatsApp with 2 Billion users monthly. Facebook is a platform used by people to connect and share information through things like pictures with others. YouTube is a platform where people make a channel to post videos in order to inform or entertain people. WhatsApp is a platform where people send messages back and forth containing photos, videos, text, or audio messages back and forth over the internet in order to communicate.
Demographics play a big role in social media. Demographics are the statistics of the people using or being affected by something. This ranges from age, to ethnicity, employment status etc. This helps in social media for the company to know how to adapt their services and marketing to become more appealing to the right audiences.
According to Hootsuite, in an article entitled “19 Facebook Demographics to Inform Your Strategy in 2022” by Claire Beveridge, one of the demographics that stand out the most is that “Facebook is the most popular social media network for men and women aged 35-44”. This can help the company of Facebook to know to direct their marketing toward this specific age group. Users of Facebook are also more likely to use Instagram and WhatsApp, other platforms now under the blanket company Meta. An important demographic in YouTube is that there are more users in India (467 Million) than the United States (240 Million). According to ThinkImpact, in “WhatsApp Statistics” states a notable statistic that “22% of users are on iOS and 73% are on Android.” This can help the company to know how to format specific things so they will appear better on different devices.
It can also be important to know how long people are spending on a platform. In the article “How Much Time Do People Spend on Social Media in 2022?”, from techjury, Deyen G. states that “Facebook is the most popular, costing people an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes each day”…”Youtube takes an average of 40 minutes per day”…and ”An average user opens the WhatsApp app 23-25 times daily”. These statistics can be important for companies to realize if their platform is being used more or less. It can also be helpful for blanket companies like Meta to know where to direct their funding. In terms of which platform is growing the most, it is still Facebook. I think this is because it is the most simple for people to connect with others and stay up to date on events. On all three of these platforms, mobile usage has been on the rise, and usage of PC’s and tablets are constantly declining.
Sources:
“How Much Time Do People Spend on Social Media in 2022?”, G. Deyen, techjury, June 2, 2022, Accessed June 12 2022, https://techjury.net/blog/time-spent-on-social-media/#gref
“The Top 10 Social Media Sites & Platforms 2022”, Walsh Shelley, Search Engine Journal, May 30, 2022, Accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/#close
“WhatsApp Statistics”, ThinkImpact, 2022, Accessed June 12, 2022, https://www.thinkimpact.com/whatsapp-statistics/#:~:text=US%20Statistics&text=As%20of%202020%2C%20WhatsApp%20had,represented%2017%25%20of%20the%20users.
“Youtube User Statistics 2022”, GMI Blogger, GMI, Accessed June 12, 2022,https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statistics/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20US%20internet,%25%20and%2066%25%20users%20respectively.
“19 Facebook Demographics to Inform Your Strategy in 2022”, Beveridge Claire, Hootsuite, March 24, 2022, Accessed June 12, 2022, https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-demographics/