With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide.The platform surpassed two billion active users in the second quarter of 2017, taking just over 13 years to reach this milestone. In comparison, Meta-owned Instagram took 11.2 years, and Google’s YouTube took just over 14 years to achieve this landmark. As of January 2022,Facebook’s leading audience base was in India, with almost 330 million users whilst the United States ranked second with an approximate total of 179 million users. The platform also finds remarkable popularity in Indonesia and Brazil.

Social Media usage in the United States

In January 2021,Facebook was the platform on which users in the United States spent the most time per day. The average time spent on Facebook was 33 minutes, followed by TikTok with 32 minutes and Twitter with 31 daily minutes. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, all major social media platforms saw an increase in daily usage, which then either plateaued or decreased in 2021. At the end of 2021,over a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States belonged to the 25 to 34 year age group and 18.2 percent of users were in the 35 to 44 year age group. In general,Facebook users were more likely to be female.

Meta Platforms

Meta is Facebook’s recently renamed parent company and had agrand total of 3.59 billion core product users by the final quarter of 2021. Other Meta products include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus – Meta’s virtual reality subsidiary which produces VR headsets. In 2021,Meta's revenue amounted to 117 billion US dollars, up from around 86 billion U.S. dollars in the previous financial year.