The total number of active social media users has been steadily growing year on year in Russia, with the exception of 2017, when the audience size dropped significantly across the country. By February 2022, there were 106 million active social media users in Russia.
The most popular social platforms in Russia
Whatsapp was the leading social media platform in the america cell phone number list country with a penetration rate of over 80 percent as of Q3 2021. The platform in question gained momentum after COVID-19, and the number of users increased significantly. After the events of February, the audience growth slowed down, but the activity on Telegram increased .
The number of Facebook* users in Russia has been steadily increasing since April 2021, peaking in January 2022. As of the most recently observed month, the number of Facebook users across the country reached 71.13 million, marking a slight decline from the previous month.
VKontakte, known as the Russian version of Facebook*, was a serious competitor to the former in the region and by December 2020 had more than 40.64 million monthly users in Russia alone. In February 2022, VKontakte's audience increased due to the registration of new users who switched from "prohibited" social networks.
We have described in detail the current statistics of another popular domestic social network, Odnoklassniki, in this article . OK has also seen a steady increase in its active audience.
In 2020, Russians were the most active social media users in Europe, spending an average of almost two and a half hours a day consuming and generating content from social networks and messengers. Due to the pandemic and recent events, user activity on social networks has increased even more.
Mobile devices remain the most frequently used devices for connecting to social networks, especially among younger generations. In aggregate terms, the share of female users exceeds the male audience on most platforms, with the exception of Twitter * and YouTube.
YouTube had the largest number of users in Russia than any other social network, with an audience of almost 79.3 million in the month of October 2021. The third-largest monthly reach was recorded for Instagram*.
