Social sharing is distributed across video, social networking, messaging, discussion, and professional platforms. In the Pew Research Center’s June 2025 U.S. adult measure, YouTube reached 84%, Facebook 71%, Instagram 50%, and TikTok 37%. The figures below separate broad platform use from daily activity, audience differences, posting behavior, and company-reported scale.
Contents
- The biggest platforms
- Age differences in platform use
- Audience differences across groups
- Growth and daily use
- Posting, reposting, and visual content
- Meta’s reported platform scale
The biggest platforms
Pew Research Center’s Social Media Fact Sheet, published June 18, 2025, reports how many U.S. adults say they ever use each platform. These are reach measures: they indicate whether respondents use a service at all, not how often they share content there.
| Platform | U.S. adults who ever use it |
|---|---|
| YouTube | 84% |
| 71% | |
| 50% | |
| TikTok | 37% |
| 26% | |
| Snapchat | 26% |
| 25% | |
| 21% | |
| Threads | 8% |
| Bluesky | 4% |
| Truth Social | 3% |
YouTube and Facebook are the broadest platforms in this measure. Instagram reaches half of U.S. adults, while TikTok reaches more than one-third. Reddit, Snapchat, and WhatsApp occupy a similar overall range at 25% to 26%, followed by LinkedIn at 21%.
The smaller overall percentages for Threads, Bluesky, and Truth Social do not describe the intensity of activity among their users. They describe the share of all U.S. adults who say they ever use each service. For a blog or online community, that distinction matters: a platform can have a smaller total audience while still being relevant to a particular readership.
Age differences in platform use
Age is one of the clearest dividing lines in the available platform figures. Among U.S. adults ages 18 to 29, Pew reports use of YouTube at 95%, Instagram at 80%, TikTok at 63%, Snapchat at 58%, Reddit at 48%, WhatsApp at 37%, and X, formerly Twitter, at 33% (Social Media Fact Sheet, June 18, 2025).
Among adults ages 65 and older, the corresponding figures are 64% for YouTube, 57% for Facebook, 19% for Instagram, 12% for TikTok, 6% for Reddit, 4% for Snapchat, and 10% for X, formerly Twitter. Facebook therefore has a particularly visible role among older adults in this comparison, while Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and X show much higher reported use among younger adults.
The comparison is useful for content distribution. A blog serving younger readers has a large potential audience on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, and X, based on these reported age-group percentages. A community with many older readers may find Facebook and YouTube especially important. These figures measure platform use by age group, not sharing rates or the likelihood that a person will pass along a particular article.
Audience differences across groups
Platform use also varies by gender, race and ethnicity, income, education, geography, and political identity. Pew Research Center’s June 18, 2025 Social Media Fact Sheet reports that 55% of women use Instagram, compared with 44% of men. Facebook use is 78% among women and 63% among men.
The reported race and ethnicity differences include 54% of Black adults using Instagram, compared with 45% of White adults. TikTok use is 57% among Hispanic adults, compared with 28% among White adults. WhatsApp use is 56% among Hispanic adults and 23% among White adults. Reddit use is 44% among Asian adults, compared with 27% among White adults.
Household income and education show additional gaps. Instagram use is 60% among adults in households earning $100,000 or more, compared with 41% among adults in households earning under $30,000. Reddit use is 37% among adults with a college degree, compared with 15% among adults with a high school education or less. WhatsApp use is 41% among adults with a college degree and 27% among adults with a high school education or less.
Geography also changes the picture. Instagram use is 55% among urban adults, compared with 37% among rural adults. WhatsApp use is 44% among urban adults and 17% among rural adults. X shows the reverse pattern in the supplied comparison: 32% of rural adults use it, compared with 23% of urban adults.
Political identity is associated with different reported platform patterns as well. TikTok use is 40% among Republican and Republican-leaning adults, compared with 33% among Democratic and Democratic-leaning adults. WhatsApp use is 38% among Democratic and Democratic-leaning adults and 25% among Republicans and Republican leaners. Bluesky use is 8% among Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults, compared with 1% among Republicans and Republican leaners.
These are audience composition statistics, not predictions about an individual reader. They can help a publisher identify where a community may already be present, but they do not establish why people use a platform or how often they share links.
Growth and daily use
Pew Research Center’s Americans’ Social Media Use 2025 report, published November 20, 2025, gives selected comparisons with 2021. TikTok use among U.S. adults is 37%, up from 21% in 2021. Instagram is at 50%, up from 40%. WhatsApp is at 34%, up from 23%, and Reddit is at 26%, up from 18%.
The same report separates ever-use from daily behavior. It says 84% of U.S. adults visit YouTube at least once a day, while 71% visit Facebook at least once a day. Daily TikTok users represent 24% of U.S. adults, and daily X users represent 10%.
| Measure | Current figure | Earlier or comparison figure |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok use | 37% | 21% in 2021 |
| Instagram use | 50% | 40% in 2021 |
| WhatsApp use | 34% | 23% in 2021 |
| Reddit use | 26% | 18% in 2021 |
| YouTube daily visit | 84% | — |
| Facebook daily visit | 71% | — |
| TikTok daily use | 24% | — |
| X daily use | 10% | — |
The current and earlier values in the first four rows describe reported platform use at the stated measurement points. They should not be read as forecasts. The daily figures use a different frequency measure, so they are not directly interchangeable with the ever-use percentages in the earlier table.
Posting, reposting, and visual content
The available content-sharing measures come from earlier Pew Research Center studies and should be kept separate from the 2025 platform-use figures. In Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online, published September 13, 2012, 56% of internet users created at least one kind of photo or video content online, while 32% both created and curated content. The same study reports that 45% shared photos they took themselves, 18% shared videos they created themselves, 35% reposted photos found online on image-sharing sites, and 25% reposted videos found online on video-sharing sites.
Pew’s Photo and Video Sharing Grow Online report, published October 28, 2013, found that 54% of internet users posted original photos or videos online in 2013, while 47% reposted photos or videos found elsewhere online. Among online women, 59% posted photos or videos they had taken themselves and 53% shared visual content found elsewhere on the web.
Age differences were also visible in that 2013 research. Among internet users ages 18 to 29, 81% uploaded original multimedia and 68% reposted photos or videos found elsewhere online. Among cell owners ages 18 to 29, 43% used Instagram and 26% used Snapchat in 2013.
More recent platform-specific behavior appears in Pew Research Center’s How U.S. Adults Use TikTok, published February 22, 2024. Among U.S. adult TikTok users, 52% had ever posted a video, 40% had posted videos that were publicly visible, and 70% had changed their account nickname from the default.
The posting figures describe different populations and dates, so they should not be combined into one trend line. The 2012 and 2013 measures refer to internet users or specific age groups, while the TikTok figures refer to U.S. adult TikTok users. They nevertheless show several distinct behaviors that matter to online communities: creating original media, curating or reposting existing media, making posts public, and customizing an account identity.
Meta’s reported platform scale
Meta’s company-reported family metrics provide another view of social activity. In its January 30, 2025 report for the fourth quarter and full year 2024, Meta said an average of 3.35 billion family daily active people were on its platforms in December 2024, up 5% year over year.
Meta reported 3.29 billion family daily active people in September 2024, up 5% year over year; 3.27 billion in June 2024, up 7%; and 3.24 billion in March 2024, up 7%. For December 2023, it reported 3.19 billion, up 8% year over year. Earlier reports put December 2022 at 2.96 billion, up 5%, and December 2021 at 2.82 billion, up 8%.
These are averages for the stated months or quarters, not a count of unique people who shared content. Meta also reported 3.74 billion family monthly active people as of December 31, 2022, up 4% year over year. Monthly and daily measures answer different questions and should not be substituted for one another.
Meta’s reported revenue shows the commercial scale of the company behind several major sharing environments. Meta reported $164.50 billion in full-year 2024 revenue, up 22% year over year. It reported $48.39 billion in fourth-quarter 2024 revenue, up 21%; $40.59 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 19%; $39.07 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 22%; and $36.46 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 27%.
The audience and revenue figures come from Meta’s own results reports, while the usage and behavior figures above come from Pew Research Center reports. They are different kinds of evidence: company-reported platform totals, survey-based audience measures, and survey-based sharing behavior. Keeping those categories distinct makes social sharing statistics more useful for planning content, building communities, and choosing distribution channels.