We’ve analyzed 190 countries across the world and identified those with the highest and the lowest percentage of active social media users. Curious if your country is one of them? Continue reading to find out.
Data source
At NapoleonCat, we work with data fetched directly from the respective social media platforms’ APIs. We scan data every day to create monthly statistics. For the sake of the study, we analyzed data from November 2020.
The estimations are based on users’ location declarations and they concern only active users, not the overall number of Facebook accounts.
The study concerns 190 countries across the world; all of them have populations bigger than 150k. You can access the complete list of the studied countries here.
You can check out the statistics for all countries using NapoleonCat’s social media demographics browser.
The numbers presented in the study may differ by one-tenth from the numbers displayed on www.napoleoncat.com/stats. For the free browser, we round up the population numbers.
The most active countries
With the overwhelming result of 93.74%, Brunei Darussalam has the highest percentage of active social media users in the World.
The second and third place in the ranking belongs to Malta (92.64%) and Guam (88.44%). The other countries from the top ten are Libya, Bahrain, Cyprus, Chile, Iceland, Taiwan, and the Maldives.
Top 10
| Country | Active Facebook users |
|---|---|
| Brunei Darussalam | 93.74% |
| Malta | 92.64% |
| Guam | 88.44% |
| Libya | 84.82% |
| Bahrain | 82.75% |
| Cyprus | 82.26% |
| Chile | 81.92% |
| Iceland | 81.48% |
| Taiwan | 79.95% |
| Maldives | 79.85% |
In the case of Facebook, we excluded Qatar and Kuwait, countries that noted 102.14% and 97.30% of active Facebook users, respectively. These numbers exceeded the actual population number either in total (Qatar) or in the number of male users (Kuwait). This disproportion may result from the declarative character of the data. Since migrants constitute a significant proportion of the population both in Qatar and Kuwait, there may actually be more inhabitants than the official statistics claim.
The least active countries
Countries with the lowest percentage of active Facebook users are as follows: Eritrea (0.06%), China (0.24%), and Turkmenistan (1.82%).
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These results don’t seem surprising. In September 2020, only 8.3% of the entire Eritrean population had Internet access, and the government regularly shuts down access to social media. In China, Facebook and other social media platforms have been banned for years. The social media app is also forbidden in the ex-Soviet Republic, Turkmenistan.
At a guess, another country that may shortly join the ranking of the least active Facebook users are the Solomon Islands (currently 18% of active Facebook users), where the social platform was banned last month.
Messenger
The most active countries
When it comes to active Messenger users, the leading country in the world is Malta. There were 353,500 active users of the app in November 2020, which accounts for 80.66% of the entire Maltese population.
With a grand total of 78.46%, the second place belongs to Qatar. The country is a smidgeon ahead of Libya (76.94%), by a little over 1.5 percentage points.
Top 10
Here’s a complete list of the top ten countries with the highest percentage of active Messenger users in the world.
| Country | Active users |
|---|---|
| Malta | 80.66% |
| Qatar | 78.46% |
| Libya | 76.94% |
| Ecuador | 72.13% |
| Thailand | 71.60% |
| Peru | 70.94% |
| Mongolia | 70.75% |
| Maldives | 70.20% |
| Philippines | 70.08% |
| Taiwan | 69.85% |
The least active counties
Countries with the lowest percentage of active Messenger users are Eritrea (0.03%), China (0.05%), and Turkmenistan (0.14%).
The most active countries
In the case of Instagram, the numbers aren’t as mind-blowing as for Facebook and Messenger. The photo and video sharing platform has the highest percentage of active users in Brunei Darussalam, which equals 54.95% of the entire population.
The second place goes to Kazakhstan (54.00%), and the third to Sweden (53.43%). Instagram lovers also live in Iceland, Kuwait, Turkey, Cyprus, Chile, Bahrain, and Guam.
Top 10
| Country | Active users |
|---|---|
| Brunei Darussalam | 54.95% |
| Kazakhstan | 54.00% |
| Sweden | 53.43% |
| Iceland | 53.41% |
| Kuwait | 52.86% |
| Turkey | 52.23% |
| Cyprus | 51.46% |
| Chile | 50.99% |
| Bahrain | 50.14% |
| Guam | 48.22% |
The least active countries
Countries with the lowest percentage of active Instagrammers are Eritrea (0.02%), the Central African Republic (0.15%), and China (0.20%).
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The most active countries
LinkedIn differs from the other platforms; its nature is strictly professional. The list of the top ten countries with the highest percentage of active LinkedIn users consists of highly-developed countries. A lap ahead in this ranking is Iceland – the country stormed ahead of the second position (the Netherlands) by over 15%(!).
The third place in this ranking belongs to the United States (51.17%). The other countries that exhibit high activity on LinkedIn are Singapore, Malta, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, and Australia.
Top 10
| Country | Active users |
|---|---|
| Iceland | 69.96% |
| The Netherlands | 54.30% |
| The United States | 51.17% |
| Singapore | 50.23% |
| Malta | 49.65% |
| United Arab Emirates | 48.09% |
| Ireland | 47.67% |
| Denmark | 47.22% |
| Canada | 46.81% |
| Australia | 46.65% |
The least active countries
The countries where people are the least active on LinkedIn are Eritrea (0.19%), Chad (0.29%), and South Sudan (0.30%)
Bottom line
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and LinkedIn are widely used around the world. The countries that kept featuring in the rankings as the most active were Brunei Darussalam, Iceland, and Malta. In the case of the less active countries, the first place in all categories (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and LinkedIn) belongs to an eastern African country, Eritrea. China was present in three out of the four rankings.
If you want to find out more about the country that you live in (or take a gander at any other country), use our free stats browser.
Was your country listed in any of the rankings? Share the study with your countrymen on social media!
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