Interesting statistics about WhatsApp: Since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has been gaining users at an impressive rate. Therefore, we are going to know 12 interesting statistics about the most famous messaging application worldwide.
The rise of social networks can be felt in any environment and place. Although this was not the case at first, for a long time now it has not been attributed only to the youngest, being able to see people of practically any age with a telephone in their hand .
This is something that generates a lot of controversy , especially with regard to the little ones in the house, who each time have a screen in front of them.
Quite the opposite occurs on the side of older people, for whom it is gratifying to discover new things and adapt to the future.
Leaving this aside, it is clear that the number of people with an Internet connection is increasing a little more every day: currently 5,000 million. Of these, 4.6 billion are users of social networks, which translates into almost 60% of the world’s population.
In order to better introduce ourselves to WhatsApp Statistics, we will first put ourselves in context with a brief summary of its history. Mainly, we will review curious facts about the arrival of the best tools of the messaging app.
WhatsApp has been with us for 13 years
WhatsApp came to light in January 2009 , although in its first year of life it was only available for the iPhone and the famous BlackBerry mobile phones, which fell into oblivion. It was not until a year later, in 2010 , when it was introduced to smartphones with the Android operating system .
Can you imagine a life without voice messages? Neither do we, much less on WhatsApp. However, these did not arrive in the messaging app until 2013 , just a few months before the option to hide the “last time” connection and the double read check also did .
At that time it was unthinkable, but now voice messages have advanced so much that you can change your WhatsApp voice to that of Bart Simpson or Goku. The app is called FakeYou.
Its course changed completely in 2014, when Mark Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp for a figure close to 20,000 million dollars. Indeed, the creator of Facebook and current CEO of Meta, made fun of iMessage a few days ago, alleging the superiority of WhatsApp.
In 2015, two great innovations came to the messaging application: individual chats now allowed voice calls and the birth of WhatsApp Web, a version designed for computers capable of synchronization through a QR code.
If you’re a bit lost and don’t know how to handle this version easily, we leave you an article with the definitive guide to WhatsApp Web to use it from the browser.
Gradually approaching the present, and already in recent 2016, they enabled one of the great keys in WhatsApp privacy: end-to-end encryption , which they have perfected over the years.
This is something that other platforms have been acquiring. For example, earlier this year Facebook Messenger announced end-to-end encryption for this year, in addition to other options such as the screenshot notification.
But it was not the only novelty of the 2016 season, since video calls were also officially launched, those that saved us from the hard months of confinement. However, at this time there was only the option of doing it individually .
2017 was also a year of progress, something easily demonstrable with these data: the mythical WhatsApp Status (Statuses) arrived, a clear copy to Instagram, which in turn had acquired it from Snapchat. That same year the option to delete messages and send location in real time appeared .
It also seems that we have been sending them all our lives, but WhatsApp stickers entered our lives in 2019. If you want to try it.
The following seasons left us tools as curious as the dark mode in WhatsApp, an elegant change of scenery included in the year 2020. And others as useful as the speed of voice messages , something that has saved many people since May 2021.
This same year, WhatsApp has given us the expected reactions on messages , sharing documents of up to 2 GB, the option to delete messages for everyone after 48 hours and creating groups of up to 512 members. The latter is incredible, but true.
After this brief review of its 13-year history, we are going to discover Interesting statistics about WhatsApp that you will like to know. The data has been taken from the Digital Global Overview Report 2022, carried out annually by Hootsuite and We Are Social.
2 billion monthly users on WhatsApp
Before we begin, let’s review the current world population data. Today, the figure stands at 8,000 million inhabitants, of which 50.5% belong to the male population and 49.5% to the female population.
WhatsApp has seen overwhelming growth in monthly active users. The messaging app went from having 450 million users in 2014, just at the time of its sale to Facebook, to more than double that number in two years: 1,000 million users in 2016 .
Some scandalous figures, with WhatsApp it can boast of having 2,000 million users today. If it continues at this rate, and everything indicates that it will, the statistics predict that it will surpass the barrier of 3,000 million active users in 2027.
WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in the world
Therefore, when we say that WhatsApp is the most widely used instant messaging app worldwide, we are not exaggerating.
WhatsApp is only ahead of YouTube, with 2,500 million users, and Facebook, which already exceeds 3,000 million. However, none of them is considered an instant messaging application as such, so this statement still stands.
In addition, these data leave its most direct rival far behind: Telegram. This messaging app is gaining more and more popularity, especially due to the privacy settings offered, but it currently has 550 million users .
The data of this app is rising at the speed of the foam, and just a few months ago they announced Telegram Premium: the paid version. This includes faster downloads, giant stickers, exclusive reactions and animated profile photos, among other things.
Looking to the year 2025, it is estimated that 3.5 billion new people will join messaging applications. This is good news for WhatsApp, which if it continues like this you will see a good piece of the pie on your table.
WhatsApp is the favorite social network in Spain
Placing ourselves in a specific country, the Digital Global Overview Report 2022 makes it clear that – WhatsApp continues to be the favorite application of the Spanish population.
In 2019, WhatsApp had 93% of active users on social networks . This means that its popularity has been somewhat reduced in these three years, currently having 91% of users, but it continues to lead the app market.
Behind it are two other applications from the Meta company: Facebook (73.3%) and Instagram (71.7%). Both enjoy very similar percentages, something that is not the case with the distant fourth position of Twitter, which accounts for 46.7% of active users on social networks.
However, penetration is not the same in all age segments in Spain. Currently, the group from 12 to 24 years old obtains 22% of the total WhatsApp users, but in 2019 it reached 30% of the active users in the country.
On the other hand, the age group from 25 to 70 years takes the first prize. This segment is divided into three age groups, which if they join forces, obtain 78% of total WhatsApp users in Spain:
- 25 to 40 years : 25% of users.
- 41 to 55 years : 30% of users.
- 56 to 70 years : 21% of users.
TikTok is already more popular than Netflix among young people.
Ultimately, we can see how younger users have somewhat abandoned WhatsApp, pulling much more towards applications like TikTok. Conversely, the older age groups use WhatsApp more than in 2019, just three years ago.
WhatsApp in the US, the 7th most downloaded app
Focusing on the data from the most powerful and influential country in the world, we found that last year 47 million people downloaded the WhatsApp app in the United States.
This is a good figure, since this figure increased by 5% compared to the results obtained in 2020. This may be due to the fact that the country’s coverage is improving in many difficult areas, something that we verified with the 6 best telephone operators in the United States .
According to the Digital Global Overview Report 2022, TikTok leads the download list with 94 million, followed by Instagram far behind with 64 million. Finishing the podium we find Snapchat , which obtained the bronze medal with 56 million downloads .
Among these data, WhatsApp is currently in seventh position in the US ranking. For now, we can conclude by saying that WhatsApp is not capable of overshadowing apps as strong as TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat.
First of all, we must be aware that 47 million users would be a more than overwhelming number for many countries. However, one must take into account the immense population of the United States: 332 million people .
To get an idea of its reach, the number of users that WhatsApp currently has in the US is equated to the number of inhabitants in Spain. Currently, our country has 47.33 million inhabitants registered in the year 2021.
However, the statistics for the American country are really positive, indicating that WhatsApp in the US will reach 85 million users by 2023. In other words, they expect that next year it will have practically double the current users.
WhatsApp is more used by Hispanics in the US
Beyond age segments, have you ever wondered which segment of the population uses WhatsApp the most? We talk about distinctions by race or ethnicity , and here we tell you the case of the US population.
According to the latest studies, Hispanic Americans (46%) are more likely than others to use the WhatsApp app, regardless of whether the latter are African Americans (23%) or white Americans (15%) .
We dedicate 18.6 hours per month to WhatsApp
Are you aware of the number of hours you spend per day looking at your mobile phone? Many people have full control of their smartphone, perfectly managing the hours they spend in front of their screen, but another sector of the population remains totally abducted.
If we talk about WhatsApp, we know that its users spend an average of 18.6 hours per month in the instant messaging app. This figure is truly crazy, and even more so if we realize that it is practically a full day , dangerously close to 24 hours.
The situation is even more alarming in Indonesia, where the latest studies conclude that its users spend 31.4 hours per month using WhatsApp. Imagine wasting (or investing, depending on your perspective) a day and a half of your life, every month, on this app.
Instead, we found that “French and Australian users” spend the least time on the Meta app: 5.4 and 5.8 hours per month on WhatsApp , respectively. However, that does not mean that they do without social networks, since other data suggests that they communicate more via iMessage.
WhatsApp has 1.5% of exclusive users
The boom in social networks has not left a puppet with a head, and rare is the person who has not fallen into downloading from any social network. Basically, because your possibilities of instant communication would be reduced to phone calls.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, since we have found that they take a lot of our life, most people use various social networks to communicate . In fact, the usual thing is to find people with the complete pack: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
Well, WhatsApp gets 1.5% of its users to have exclusivity with the messaging app. This is something very positive and difficult to achieve, since these users do not use any other social network, probably because they do not see deficiencies or do not feel the need to do so.
WhatsApp is more popular among people aged 16-64
There is life beyond Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, the four applications that we have just mentioned and that take the gold medal for the most used social networks. However, the positive point of these is that they cover more age segments than others.
Obviously, there are many more social networks that have millions of users, such as YouTube or TikTok , the latter being at its best. However, some are aimed at smaller age groups, mainly young people , as is the case with TikTok.
This brings us directly to another stat: WhatsApp leadership among people aged 16-64 . It is crowned as the favorite app on the planet in this age segment, surpassing competitors as strong and direct as Instagram and Facebook.
WhatsApp is the 7th most searched word in browsers
Search engines are direct witnesses of the daily inquiries made by their users. Although making use of an online dictionary or entering the formula “word + what is” is the order of the day, it is not among the most sought after.
If you want to carry out a different search, here we leave you an article with the 13 best image search engines on the Internet . They are very interesting tools, little known by Internet users and totally free.
Leading the search ranking we find “Google”, a word identified as the favorite browser of the vast majority of users, and behind it we see the “YouTube” platform in second position.
They are followed by the terms “you”, “time” and “translate” , in that same order, being words that can provide us with a lot of information.
After all of them, it’s time for WhatsApp, which increased its search volume by 24.2% year-on-year . The instant messaging app is in seventh position, which means that an abysmal number of people think about it and decide to get information, access its website or download it.
The WhatsApp website, one of the least visited
However, it is also interesting to know that the figures on its website are not the best.
Statistics show that WhatsApp.com, is one of the official web pages that enjoys the fewest visits within the group of social networks: 34,000 million exactly.
That sounds like a big number, but when you compare it to YouTube.com’s 408 billion, Facebook.com’s 265 billion, and Twitter.com’s 78 billion, it’s clearly not.
We have already discovered 12 interesting WhatsApp statistics, although we will continue to keep abreast of the figures and progress made by the most famous messaging app in the world. Did you know any of them?
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