The Most Important Social Media Statistics of 2025

2 in 3 people now use social media in 2025. That means 5.66 billion people. TikTok’s own data suggests that videos tagged with #fyp have now been viewed more than 100 trillion times. Yes, that's with a T, trillion. Social media continues to grow as 21.5 million new users are created every month. Social media is now shaped to be the new battleground of advertising. 

Demographics: 

Meta remains central to global social habits. Facebook leads in overall reach, with over half of online adults using it monthly, which is about 3.07 billion people. Instagram is close behind with 3 billion. TikTok comes in 5th after WhatsApp and YouTube.

Demographically, platform preferences vary by age. Instagram is especially popular with younger users (16–34). Facebook leads in the 25-35 and also the 65+ age brackets. In Ireland specifically, people average using social media 4.85 days out of the week. 

Ads and Ad Spend: 

Social media ad spend is the third highest compared to Google search and traditional ad spend, making up €235.7 billion. Social media ads are now 32% of global digital ad spend in 2025. €4 billion per week is spent on social media ads alone. Ireland has the 15th highest average ad spend per capita, with €340 per business.

When it comes to advertising, social media remains a powerful discovery engine: social ads are the #1 driver of brand awareness among people aged 16–34. 30.4% of brand discovery comes from social media channels. With 40.6% of brand research coming from social media. 26% of people use social media to actively find and buy products. 

AI: 

AI is leading the charge with search queries as the top three language learning online models have 687 million monthly users, with Chatgpt alone making up 550 million users. The majority of information that is scraped by these AI engines is from company blogs and posts, so having an active blog is still important for businesses. 

All this to say, if you are not using social media for your marketing, hopefully these statistics can change your mind. If you’re looking to cut through the noise, here at Out of Orange, we mix data and creativity to get you results.