In this article, we will be taking a look at the top 25 countries with the most Facebook users. To skip our detailed analysis, you can go directly to see the top 5 countries with the most Facebook users.
While social media has been around since the 1990s and achieved true global popularity with MySpace, peaking at nearly 76 million users, those numbers seem positively quaint after the unprecedented growth Facebook experienced once it became available to the global population in 2006. Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) revolutionized the social media space, which is now a $231 billion industry and growing significantly year on year. By the end of 2006, Facebook had 12 million users, which grew to 100 million users before the end of 2007, and reached 500 million users by 2010, unparalleled growth which then crossed 1 billion users in September 2012.
To capitalize on its exponential growth, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), then known as Facebook, went public in 2012, and had the third largest U.S. IPO at the time, raising $16 billion, though it is now not considered among the largest IPOs of all time. However, with the share price only ending $0.23 above the IPO price at the closing bell on the first day, it was widely considered to be a disappointing IPO, especially as the price declined to $27 in June 2012 just a month after going public. But, despite a massive dip in 2022, Meta Platforms, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:META) has since gained 718% YTD, though it is still behind its all-time high achieved in 2021, with the countries with the most Facebook users playing a major part in this, and is unsurprisingly among most valuable social media companies in the world. The 2022 decline was driven by higher competition from TikTok, a decline in ad spending and also a fall in revenue from Apple's ad-tracking changes.
Currently Facebook boasts around 3 billion monthly active users and while growth continues, the growth rate has declined in recent years as other social media apps, with Instagram and TikTok being the biggest threats, and you can learn more about it by visiting the countries with the highest number of Instagram users in 2023. While both Instagram and Tiktok are more preferred by the younger generation, people from ages 34 and above still prefer Facebook, and in the U.S. particularly, one of the countries with the most Facebook users, only YouTube had more users than Facebook in the country in 2021.
Another reason that Facebook's growth rate has declined is its involvement in several major controversies, with one of the biggest being the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which resulted in the personal data of tens of millions of people being leaked. Facebook had already been facing pressure from all fronts in terms of data privacy and this led to a lot of users leaving the social media platform. Further controversy emerged after the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections with allegations suggesting that Facebook engaged in political manipulation, souring user experience. Of course, a separate article could be written on all issues concerning Facebook but privacy concerns seem to dominate most other cyclical issues. Because of these matters not to mention privacy concerns and censorship implementation, many countries including China, Syria, Iran and Russia have outright banned Facebook, which is why even though China is the second-most populous country in the world, it is not among the countries with the most Facebook users in the world.
To boost Facebook's revenue, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has started to become more innovative, and the launch of Reels on both Facebook and Instagram has provided a major revenue boost and is one of the reasons behind its share price increasing by 150% YTD. Further, an important part of Meta Platforms, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:META) future is focused on AI, which is being incorporated in Facebook and Instagram to improve efficiency and monetization especially in terms of AI-content recommendation, and might help Facebook market share grow outside of countries that have the most Facebook users in the world. This was called out by Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q2 2023 earnings call stating "AI-recommended content from accounts you don't follow is now the fastest growing category of content on Facebook's feed. Since introducing these recommendations, they have driven a 7% increase in overall time spent on the platform. This improves the experience because you can now discover things that you might not have otherwise followed or come across. Reels is a key part of this Discovery Engine, and Reels plays exceed 200 billion per day across Facebook and Instagram. We're seeing good progress on Reels monetization as well, with the annual revenue run-rate across our apps now exceeding $10 billion, up from $3 billion last fall. Beyond Reels, AI is driving results across our monetization tools through our automated ads products, which we call Meta Advantage. Almost all our advertisers are using at least one of our AI-driven products. We've also deployed Meta Lattice, a new model architecture that learns to predict an ad's performance across a variety of datasets and optimization goals. And we introduced AI Sandbox, a testing playground for generative AI-powered tools like automatic text variation, background generation, and image outcropping."
Methodology
To determine the countries with the most Facebook users in the world, we headed over to DataReportal to obtain the latest figures on Facebook users by country in 2023. We then also calculated the per capita usage for Facebook based on each country's population, and assigned 60% weightage to total users and 40% weightage to usage per capita. Many of the countries in our list have seen more than half their total population use Facebook, showcasing its influence in society today. There is unsurprisingly a strong correlation between our list and the countries that spend the most time on social media.
Total Facebook users: 24,500,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 291
In a bid to alleviate anti-trust concerns, Germany announced that Facebook would be conducting a new overview for its users in the country.
Total Facebook users: 14,900,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 574
In 2021, a row between Australia and Facebook escalated after the latter blocked news on its platform in Australia in response to a law proposed by Australia which would force tech giants to pay for content features on their platforms.
Total Facebook users: 17,850,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 475
Recently, Facebook lifted a ban one year after imposing it on Polish far-right party Konfederacja ahead of national elections in the country.
Total Facebook users: 37,300,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 158
Apps such as Instagram and TikTok, while gaining popularity in Pakistan, are still not as widely used as Facebook, which is used by people across all age groups.
Total Facebook users: 20,800,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 463
According to SimilarWeb, based on downloads from Google's Play Store, TikTok has actually overtaken Facebook to become the most downloaded social media app in Algeria, which means Facebook needs to do more to make sure its market share continues to grow.
Total Facebook users: 32,800,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 384
Turkiye was one of the few countries to have a really popular home-grown social media website in Ekşi Sözlük but it was blocked by the country in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes in 2023 in what many claim to be a censorship move, which in turn has provided Facebook a bigger base for growth.
Total Facebook users: 16,200,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 687
Taiwan has the second highest Facebook users per capita in the world, and Facebook remains the top outright social media platform in the country.
Total Facebook users: 20,650,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 530
Facebook's decision on 1st July 2023 to not allow Canadian users to view or share news content may play a part in its userbase decreasing in the nation, with the decision taken after a Canadian law was passed which required tech companies reusing news to start blocking news articles.
Total Facebook users: 43,250,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 253
One of the countries with the highest number of Facebook users, Bangladesh has still seen around 12.5 million users not use Facebook anymore in just the last six months of 2022.
Total Facebook users: 20,250,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 597
Meta agreed to work with Malaysian polices to fight against crime and remove "undesirable content" from the country's Facebook platform.
Total Facebook users: 30,400,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 447
In 2021, Facebook agreed to make payments to pay French publishers for reusing their news, though it was fined by France for pushing tracking cookies on users.
Total Facebook users: 42,000,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 378
Despite strong pressure from other platforms including TikTok and Instagram, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform, and Italy is one of the countries with the most Facebook users in the world.
Total Facebook users: 27,950,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 475
Italy has recently announced an investigation by prosecutors for a potential tax bill of around $925 million.
Total Facebook users: 314,600,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 222
Unsurprisingly, India has the highest number of Facebook users in the world, but falls down our list of countries with the most Facebook users because a lack of Internet availability for a large percentage of the population means that per capita usage is quite low.
Total Facebook users: 27,350,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 592
Even though Instagram seems to be gaining more popularity in Argentina as opposed to Facebook, both apps enjoy almost similar levels of usage across the country.
Total Facebook users: 22,850,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 671
Over 67% of Peru's population used Facebook, a percentage that goes even higher once you consider the population that can actually use Facebook i.e. above the age of 13.
Total Facebook users: 34,400,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 514
Despite Facebook's influence, the younger generation in the UK is relying more on TikTok and Instagram, especially for news.
Total Facebook users: 33,500,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 646
Colombia recently began an investigation into the company Teleperformance, to which TikTok has outsourced content moderation, and any concerns from the investigation could result in greater leverage for Facebook to grow even more and boost Colombia's position among the countries with the most Facebook users in the world.
Total Facebook users: 119,900,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 435
The country with the highest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia has expressed concerns about influence or manipulation from Facebook in the country's presidential election, and the country's Minister of Communication and Information Technology threatened to shut down Facebook if there was evidence that user data was being harvested.
Total Facebook users: 109,100,000
Facebook users per 1,000 people: 509
Brazil is one of four countries with more than 100 million Facebook users, as despite internet penetration being comparatively low in rural and low-income areas in Brazil, more than half the population still used Facebook.
Click to continue reading and see top 5 countries with the most Facebook users. Suggested Articles:
Disclosure: None. Top 25 countries with the most Facebook users is originally published on Insider Monkey.
