Social media user numbers have continued to grow over the past 12 months too, with 256 million new users joining social media since this time last year.

That equates to annualised growth of 5.2 percent, at an average rate of 8.1 new users every single second.

The latest figures indicate that 94.5 percent of the world’s internet users now use social media each month.

However, note that figures for social media users may not represent unique individuals, and due to issues like duplicate accounts, social media user figures may exceed the figures that we publish for internet users – or even for the total population. This is why we refer to social media user “identities”.

On the other hand, it’s also worth noting that comparing social media users with figures for total population may under-represent the full extent of social media use, because most social media companies restrict use of their platforms to people aged 13 and above.

And for additional context, the latest data suggest that the number of “adult” social media users around the world (i.e. those aged 18 and above) now equates to 86.3 percent of all adults in that age group.

• 4.95 billion people currently use social media worldwide, up more than double from 2.07 billion in 2015
• The average social media user engages with an average of 6.7 various social media platforms
• 61.4% of global population in the world use social media, among audiences aged 18+ that’s as high as 80.8%
• Globally, the average time a person spends on social media a day is 2 hours 24 minutes
• Facebook is the leading social network at 3.03 billion monthly active users, followed by YouTube (2.49 billion), WhatsApp (2 billion), Instagram (2 billion), and WeChat (1.33 billion)
• 72.5% of the total US population actively use social media, totaling a number of 246 million people
• In the US, 54% of social media users are female, while the remaining 46% are male, compared with a global average of 46.4% for female, and 53.6% for male.