The pandemic has fueled greater social media usage worldwide and prompted revisions to our earlier forecasts. We now expect the total number of social network users to rise 8.1% in 2020, to 3.23 billion—equivalent to 80.7% of all internet users.

The coronavirus pandemic boosted social media usage around the world, as many people stayed home for weeks or months. In 2020, there will be nearly 150 million more social network users worldwide than we expected before the pandemic—more than the entire population of Russia. That will lift the total to 3.23 billion, well ahead of our predictions in November 2019 and June 2020. As a result, nearly 81% of internet users worldwide will be social network users.

Publishers have renewed their focus on connecting directly with consumers via email after years of intermediation on social platforms. Kerel Cooper, senior vice president of global marketing at LiveIntent, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss how consumers are engaging with those messages, and how publishers are monetizing them with ads.

As with other social networks, Twitter’s user base grew unexpectedly this year as pandemic-driven stay-at-home orders drove up social media usage overall.

In 2020, Instagram’s total number of monthly users will hit 1.00 billion for the first time, thanks to a worldwide user growth rate more than double what we had predicted before the pandemic.

Snapchat will have 347.3 million users this year, up 16.1% year over year. Emerging markets, particularly India, will fuel these gains, while growth in core regions will be more modest.

In 2020, Facebook’s worldwide user base will grow 8.7%, nearly double the rate we had forecast before the global pandemic began.