Here are a bunch of amazing Facebook statistics, facts, history and demographics that illustrate just how vast their digital empire is. Updated for 2019.
The story of Facebook is legendary; A group of Harvard University students, led by Mark Zuckerberg, got together in 2004 to create a social network to create a social network within the Harvard community. It quickly proved to be a success and spread to other colleges across the northeast and then from coast to coast. Finally, in 2006, it was opened up to the world and its unprecedented, exponential growth began, continuing to this day.
Facebook is now unquestionably the largest social network in the world with over two billion monthly active users and over a billion daily active users. With a platform as feature-rich and widely visited as Facebook’s there are countless stats that can be collected and tracked.
I have spent the past seven years identifying every measurable aspect of and facts about Facebook, starting with basic info like how many people are on the platform and then expanding and listing out each Facebook stat as I find them in an organized series of posts. You will find everything from average number of friends per user to users per country and everything in between. I hope you find some of these tallies as interesting and amazing as I do.
Facebook History
- Year Facebook launched: 2004 (as TheFacebook)
- Year TheFacebook was changed to Facebook: 2005
- Year News Feeds were introduced: 2006
- Year Facebook opened up to everyone over the age of 13: 2006
- Year pages were introduced: 2007
- Year that Facebook Chat launched: 2008
- Year that Facebook became the most-used social network globally: 2009
- Year that usernames were introduced: 2009
- Year the Like button was introduced: 2009
- Year that Timelines were first introduced: 2011
- Year that Facebook Chat became Facebook Messenger: 2011
- Year the Bug Bounty program launched: 2011
- Year of Facebook’s IPO: 2012
- Year the App Center launched: 2012
- Year Facebook bought Instagram: 2012
- Year Facebook joined the Fortune 500: 2013
- Year Facebook joined the S&P 500: 2013
- Year that Graph Search launched: 2013
- Year that Facebook Home launched: 2013
- Year that clickable hashtags were introduced: 2013
- Year Facebook bought WhatsApp: 2014
- Year Instant Articles launched: 2015
- Year that Reactions were introduced: 2016
- Year that Deep Text was announced: 2016
- Year Workplace was announced: 2016
- Year Facebook Spaces was announced: 2017
- Year Facebook Stories launched: 2017
Facebook Facts
- Website: www.facebook.com
- Where was Facebook created: Cambridge, MA
- Who created Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes
- Where is Facebook headquarters: Menlo Park, Ca
- Facebook’s Top Executives:
- CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
- COO: Sheryl Sandberg
- CFO: David Wehner
- CTO: Mike Schroepfer
- CPO: Chris Cox
- Facebook Mobile Apps: iOS | Android
- Number of Facebook Employees: 25,105 (Source: Facebook 4/25/18)
Facebook Statistics
Users and Demographics
How many users does Facebook have?
Facebook monthly active users (MAU):
2.271 billion Facebook users
(Source: Facebook)
Facebook daily active users (DAU):
1.495 billion Facebook users
(Source: Facebook)
- Percentage of Facebook users that use it daily: 66% (Source: Facebook)
- Average number of Facebook friends for women: 166 (Source: The Telegraph January 2016)
- Average number of Facebook friends for men: 145 (Source: The Telegraph January 2016)
- Percentage of all US adults over the age of 50 that use Facebook: 50% (Source: USA Today 4/21/18)
- Percentage of all US adults aged 25-49 that use Facebook: 80% (Source Business Insider 3/5/18)
- Share of US Internet users, aged 14-17 (teens) that use Facebook: 65% (Source eMarketer January 2017)
- Percentage of millennials (15-34 year olds) that use Facebook: 91% (Source: American Press Institute 9/16/15)
- Percentage of online US adults that use Facebook: 68% (Source: Pew 3/1/18)
- Percentage of all digital time that is spent on Facebook each day: 3% (Source: Bloomberg 4/11/18)
- Degrees of separation between every Facebook user: 3.57 degrees of separation (Source: Facebook 2/4/16)
- Percentage of Facebook friends that users consider to be close friends: only 28% (Source: The Telegraph 1/20/16)
- Percentage of internet users, age 16-64, that log onto Facebook more than once a day: 23% (Source: Pew 3/1/18)
- Number of friends that the average user has: 155 (Source: The Telegraph 1/20/16)
- Daily active users in the US & Canada: 185 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Daily active users in Asia: 561 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Daily active users in Europe: 278 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Monthly active users in Africa: 170 million (Source: AllAfrica 4/6/17)
- Monthly active users in the US & Canada: 242 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Monthly active users in Asia: 917 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Monthly active users in Europe: 375 million users (Source: Facebook)
- Monthly active users in India: 250 million (Source: Times of India 4/5/18)
- Monthly active users in Germany: 30 million monthly active users (Source: Telecompaper 6/1/17)
- City with the largest number of Facebook users in the world: Bangkok (35 million users)
Facebook User Statistics
- Number of people that use Facebook Stories: 150 million daily users (Source: Small Biz Trends 8/13/18)
- Number of Facebook posts (all time): 2 trillion posts (Source: Techcrunch July 2016)
- Number of emojis sent (all time): 60 million emojis (Source: Mashable July 2017)
- Number of posts Facebook deletes monthly due to hate speech: 288,000 posts (Source: Digital Trends June 2017)
- Percentage of Facebook news feed stories that are read daily: 10% (Source: Venturebeat September 2016)
- Number of Facebook Events users: 700 million (Source: Facebook 8/6/18)
- Number of Facebook Events daily users: 100 million (Source: Techcrunch October 2016)
- Number of daily searches on Facebook: 2 billion searches (Source: Techcrunch June 2016)
- Percentage of users that say it is a source of news for them: 68% (Source: Journalism.org 9/7/17)
- Number of daily video views on Facebook: 8 billion views daily (Source: The Verge November 2015)
- Amount of videos viewed daily on Facebook: 100 million hours (Source: Techcrunch January 2016)
- Average amount of time a user spends viewing a news feed video: 16.7 seconds (Source: Business Insider 3/12/18)
- Average amount of time a user spends viewing a Facebook Watch video: 23 seconds (Source: Business Insider 3/12/18)
- Average monthly viewers in the US for Facebook Watch: 50 million (Source: Facebook 8/29/18)
- How many total Facebook likes since launch: 1.13 trillion (Source: Facebook)
- How many love reactions on Facebook: 175 million people (Source: Facebook June 2017)
- Top type of video content viewed: Content from friends and family (Source: eMarketer June 2016)
- Average amount of posts that are eligible to appear in a user’s feed each day: 2,000 posts (Source: Venturebeat September 2016)
- Time spent on Facebook per user per day: 20+ minutes (Source: BusinessInsider 7/8/15)
- Percentage of parents that are friends with their teenager on Facebook: 83% (Source: Pew Research April 2015)
- Percentage of drivers that admit to checking Facebook while operating their vehicle: 27% (Source: Digital Trends)
- Total number of Facebook group users: 1 billion monthly users (Source: Facebook 6/27/17)
- Number of people that play games on Facebook: 800 million gamers (Source: Venturebeat 4/18/17)
- Percentage of active Facebook users that visit it multiple times a day: 51% (Source: Pew 3/1/18)