Asia-Pacific will no longer produce huge increases in new social network users, but the sheer scale of the region means it should remain front and center for social media marketers. Facebook will remain on top, but TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are making waves.

Nearly 400 million people in Latin America will use social networks in 2022. Facebook remains the region's biggest platform, but it will experience its slowest user growth on record this year as TikTok and Instagram make gains.

US social network user growth has slowed to a crawl, and that means the social platforms will compete fiercely for users and engagement. Marketers should optimize their spending to take advantage of shifting consumer behaviors.

Meta juggles its Facebook present and metaverse future: The social network gains users, but recent losses could mean less money for metaverse R&D, giving VR platform competitors an opening.

Over 500 million people in Europe will use social networks monthly in 2022—with more than half hailing from Central and Eastern Europe. Facebook will remain the largest platform, but its lead is shrinking as Instagram and TikTok expand.

For the first time ever, Facebook is contracting in the US: The platform will lose users this year in its home market—and it’s getting grayer.

Meta thinks users need stepping stones to the metaverse: Its Crayta announcement suggests many consumers need to be pushed along the “immersion continuum.”

Reddit tries to solve its brand safety problem: A new partnership with DoubleVerify brings much-needed metrics and safety tools to its burgeoning ad platform.

Meta’s new prototypes show promise: Unveiling future VR headsets and announcing brand partnerships could stoke interest in the metaverse, but Meta still has a long way to go to push the platform into the mainstream.

Among US social network users, those ages 18 and older will spend an average of 1 hour, 40 minutes per day on those platforms in 2022, the same amount as last year. This figure is peaking after pandemic restrictions fueled a rapid rise in social media use over the past two years, and it will decline by 2 minutes next year.

Twitter has started a gentle decline in US users. The social media app peaked in 2021 with 57.8 million monthly US users. This year, that figure will flutter downward by 0.5%, hitting 57.5 million by year-end. But it's not all a decline for the platform.

While Instagram giveth, Facebook taketh away. The Meta-owned platforms face diverging futures. Instagram's US user base will increase by 4.0% this year to 128.3 million, while Facebook's will decline by 0.8% to 178.3 million.

US TikTok users will spend more time with the social media platform this year than YouTube users will spend on YouTube. This difference will be just about a fraction of a minute but will expand in years to come.

The number of social network users in Canada continues to climb, as a wider variety of platforms become available that can satisfy user appetites for information, entertainment, and personal expression.

On Monday, Twitter accepted a bid from Elon Musk to buy the platform for about $44 billion, putting the world's richest man in the driver's seat of one of the world's biggest social media apps.

Twitter’s time as a public company is coming to an end: With the platform set to release quarterly earnings this week, the time was nigh to announce its sale to Elon Musk.

TikTok is now the third-largest worldwide social network, according to our inaugural forecast. It will have 60% more users than Snapchat and twice as many as Twitter this year.

TikTok is now the third largest social network in the US, ahead of Snapchat and Pinterest. Facebook won’t be able to stop the teen exodus, Instagram’s user base is growing older, and Twitter will start losing users.

TikTok is the fastest-growing social platform amid slow overall social network user gains in the UK. Facebook remains the dominant force, but as its user base ages, its grip will begin to slip.

Meta released its Q1 2022 earnings, revealing the company's slowest revenue growth since going public, for a total of $27.91 billion. Daily active users bounced back by 30 million users to 1.96 billion, following the platform’s first-ever drop in Q4 2021.

The metaverse promises to be transformative for the digital marketing landscape—at least, as soon as tech platforms figure out how it will actually work.