Picking the right social media platform for your business is key to your marketing success. Marketing resources are finite, so choosing to target every channel is not viable for most. You have to decide which platforms are mostly likely to actually move the needle.
Platforms come and go, and their demographics change over time – so it’s important to stay up-to-date. To keep you in the loop, we’ll cover the top 5 social media platforms in Australia, their user demographics, and how people use them in 2025. It’s too soon to say how the social media ban for the under-16s that started in December will affect these top five platforms in the coming years.
1. Facebook: still the leader
One of the first platforms to achieve worldwide popularity, Facebook maintains its standing as one of the most popular social media platforms. As of February 2025, it reported more than 3.07 billion users across the globe, according to Statista. That equates to roughly 40 percent of the world’s population – an astonishing number.
Along with the largest number of users, Facebook also sees impressive daily usage. Australians spend on average 17 hours and 30 minutes per month, or about 35 minutes a day, watching content posted by others or making their own. Over 300 million posts a day are uploaded. Every minute, more than half a million comments are posted.
Facebook continues to grow
Even 21 years after its release, Facebook increased its audience 5.5% over last year, for a total of over 2.1 billion active users. Of the world’s active internet users, 56.6 percent use the platform monthly. As its growth rate increases every year, Facebook shows no sign of dying out. It’s for this reason that a whopping 92% of social media marketers use Facebook to advertise, as of May 2025.
2. YouTube, the biggest video-sharing platform
In Australia, YouTube is the second-largest social media platform in 2025. More than 2.5 billion people used the platform as of February 2025, according to Statista. Every minute, creators upload over 500 hours of video content, and viewers watch 1 billion hours every day. An astonishing one in two Australians actively uses YouTube daily.
This constant use makes YouTube one of the best social media platforms for video advertising and influencer marketing. It raked in over 8.3 billion USD in ad revenue – the first quarter of 2025, up 10.3% year-over-year, according to Variety.
Who drives YouTube’s immense popularity?
Men aged 25-34 are YouTube’s main demographic. Kids love YouTube as well, with their own specific platform ‘YouTube Kids’ being launched in 2015.
Unlike other platforms that target age 13 and up, YouTube Kids permits and encourages use by children under 13. Children now spend an average of more than two hours a day online, and at least half that time, they watch videos on YouTube or YouTube Kids.
YouTube adds features
YouTube Shorts was launched in 2021, where users post vertical short-form videos ranging from 15 seconds to a minute in length. This feature makes YouTube competitive with TikTok and Instagram Reels. The average video length in 2025 is between 20 and 40 seconds, according to DemandSage. These short-form videos attract over 70 billion views per day.
3. Instagram, more than just photo-sharing
Owned by Meta, Instagram reports 2 billion monthly users, the third-highest number for a social media site in Australia as of 2025. Developers Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched the app in October 2010, and Meta bought it in 2012 for 1 billion USD.
Instagram serves a mixed demographic: 55.2% of users are female, and 44.8% are male. The largest user base consists of females aged 25 – 34. While the majority of the audience (65.2%) use the platform monthly, a sizable minority (34.8%) do not, although they still maintain accounts.
Instagram competes with Snapchat
The popular feature Instagram Stories competes directly with Snapchat. Instagram reports that more than 500 million people use Stories daily.
Instagram and Snapchat also go head-to-head in other ways. Australians spend just over a third more of their viewing time on Snapchat rather than on Instagram. Snapchat reports more than 16.5 hours of monthly viewing time per user, whereas Instagram reports just above 12 hours. In contrast to its popularity in Australia, Snapchat ranks only seventh among top social media platforms worldwide.
Companies can advertise on Instagram – as they can on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms – by sponsoring video or photo posts to appear in users’ feeds. This advertising method is called Pay-Per-Click.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
GLOSSARYPay-Per-Click (PPC) is an online advertising model where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Unlike organic search strategies, PPC delivers immediate visibility on search engines and social platforms. You set a budget and bid on keywords relevant to your business. PPC campaigns are highly measurable, letting you track performance down to the cost per conversion. They’re ideal for quickly testing offers or driving traffic to new content. However, relying only on PPC will get costly over time.
See also: Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Return on Ad Spend (RoAS)
Further reading: Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing
The average cost for PPC on Instagram ads ranges from as low as $0.20 USD to over $2.00 USD.
WhatsApp, the Forth Most Used Social Media App in Australia
WhatsApp serves primarily as a platform for messaging family, friends, or colleagues. It is one of the most popular social networking apps worldwide, with over 2 billion monthly users. It ranks fourth for usage in Australia. Founded in February 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, Facebook bought the app on 19 February 2014.
An aging user base combines with low usage
Only 48.3% of users older than 16 use this platform frequently. Daily usage clocks in at around 2 hours and 44 minutes per month, averaging only about 5 and a half minutes a day. This low daily usage puts WhatsApp ninth in terms of time consumed, ranking behind platforms like Reddit and Messenger.
WhatsApp adds features
Many features improve user experience, like message searching, voice messages, and a status feature similar to Facebook and Snapchat Stories. Users can join communities, where several group chats may be housed in one space. The Channels feature permits companies and organisations to send users broadcast-type messages and video and voice calls.
Ads are coming to WhatsApp
Businesses can soon begin advertising on WhatsApp. The platform plans to place ads within its Status and Channel features. Ads will not go into personal chats. According to WhatsApp, businesses will be paying per ad instead of per click.
TikTok, the youth platform
TikTok is a short-form video-sharing platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Launched in September 2016 as an international version of the Chinese platform Douyin, TikTok has become one of the most downloaded apps globally. During COVID-19, it saw a massive increase in use.
Of the 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide, 55% are under age 30 and 40% are between ages 18-24. In Australia, the average TikTok user spends more than 38 hours and 51 minutes on the platform per month, or about 76 minutes a day. That amount gives TikTok the highest monthly usage rate in Australia.
Music integration and user-generated content are the cornerstones of the platform, making it the origin of many music-based trends. Users create videos that range from 15 seconds to 10 minutes long. TikTok encourages people to keep scrolling, driving up the monthly time spent per user.
Revenue is up despite hurdles
In 2024, TikTok’s Australian revenue was up to 679 million AUD, nearly double that of the previous year. Global advertising revenue is set to rise to 25 billion USD by the end of 2025.
The high volume of sponsored posts has increased revenue, especially from brands targeting a younger audience. Since the fourth quarter of 2021, there’s been a 71% increase in people using TikTok to follow or find information about brands and products, and it shows.
TikTok has been giving other platforms a run for their money, as their viewership and engagement rise. But the platform has faced a couple of hurdles, like the ban in the United States from 19 January to 14 February 2025 and the backlash to age restrictions. Clearly, these obstacles haven’t stopped the platform’s success.
Current social media usage statistics in Australia and globally
The average Australian has around 7 social media accounts and spends a whopping 6 hours on their phone. Australians use social media mostly for keeping in touch with friends and family, accounting for about 58.2% of usage. Filling spare time comes second, with people locating content and reading news stories.
Australians research brands and shop on social media
What’s increasing is the number of Australians turning to social media for their brand research. More than 58% of Australians now use social media to find products and services, and the e-commerce industry is expanding.
The average online shopper now spends just over 2000 AUD a year on online shopping, a 3% increase from previous years. Online and social media purchases now account for 13.8% of all consumer goods bought in 2025, a 6.4% increase over previous years.
Social media ad spending will grow
Since more than 63.9% of the world’s population uses social media as of February 2025, social media marketing will continue to increase. Spending on social media advertising is projected to reach $276.7 billion by the end of 2025.
Who is using social media apps the most, and where?
China has the highest number of social media users, with 1.1 billion users representing more than 74.7% of its population. They engage with social media for more than 2 hours daily. India follows with 462 million users. They primarily use Facebook, with 369.9 million people on the platform. The United States ranks third with 239 million social media users, accounting for 69.19% of its population.
While there are no explicit data sets, gender distribution among social media users is fairly even, according to Statista.
How old are social media users?
Members of Gen Z are the biggest users of social media, but that doesn’t mean older generations aren’t represented, too. While 70% of Gen X use their phone daily, only 60% of Gen Z report the same. When it comes to social media platforms, 90% of Gen Z use at least one platform, compared to about 70% of Gen X.
References:
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
- https://backlinko.com/facebook-users
- https://wearesocial.com/au/blog/2025/02/digital-2025-australia-social-media-rivals-search-for-brand-discovery/#:~:text=Facebook%20remains%20the%20most%20widely,%25)%20and%20TikTok%20(14%25
- Global Facebook user age & gender distribution 2025 – Statista
- https://bernardmarr.com/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/
- https://www.smperth.com/resources/youtube/youtube-statistics/?srsltid=AfmBOoo98knSUmtbrkj7oZioRSR61hWZkj4yOmSp6qurIcJhpQ3bPvVh
- https://www.smperth.com/resources/instagram/instagram-statistics/
- https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/china/articles/tiktok-the-worlds-most-valuable-startup-that-youve-never-heard-of/
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1434280/annual-revenue-of-tiktok-usa/
- https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/social-media-statistics-australia
- https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1004179/most-common-social-media-activities-in-australia
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
- https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/
- https://www.gwi.com/blog/social-media-statistics
- https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics-australia/
- https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/
