Saudi Arabia and Social Media Statistics 2021

Little wonder that Saudi Arabia is known as the Middle East’s most prominent social media market. This is due to some key factors that vary between religious, political and cultural that influence the use of social media in the region. Saudi Arabia and social media usage are just growing in parallel. Let’s see this in numbers why Saudi are commonly described as ‘hyperconnected’.

Saudi Arabia’s Key Statistics 

Compared with nations around the globe, Saudi Arabia stands out in terms of its social media usage. But before shedding light on Saudi Arabia and social media’s figures, let’s take a look at Saudi Arabia’s population.

Population

• Saudi Arabia’s population is nearly 35.08 million in 2021.
• 84.4% of the population are urban-based
• 42.2% of the population are females and 57.8% are males.
• With a +1.5% annual change in total population. 
• Median age is 31.9 years. 
• It has a growth rate of 1.5%. 

Connection Headlines 

Out of the total population, 39.53 million have mobile connections, and the number of internet users comes to around 33.58 million constituting 95.7% of the population. This has an annual increase of around 4.2%. Herein, the active social media users exceed 27.80 million; that is 79.3% of the population. In terms of individual social media accounts, the country scored 7th in the globe. Tabuk area has the highest percentage of social network users with 97.1% of its population using social media.

Daily Average Time Spent Online in Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Arabians spend a significant amount of time on the internet. It is estimated that the average time spent on the Internet daily comes around  7 hours and 45 minutes. The average amount of time spent on social media is 3 hours and 06 minutes, ahead of the global average of 2 hours, 25 minutes. 

Saudi Arabia’s Most Popular Devices

52.40% of Saudis use mobile phones the most, while the other half uses Laptops and Desktops, Tablets and other devices in proportions distributed in a row; ( 46%, 1% and 0.09%).

Most used Browsers In Saudi Arabia 

While Chrome is the most widely used browser in Saudi Arabia with a share of 82%, other browsers are also used, for example, Safari (6.7%), Firefox(2.7%), Samsung Internet (2.90%), Microsoft Edge (2.40%), Opera (2.30%), Internet Explorer (0.4%). When it comes to the top websites visited based in total traffic volume, Google.com occupies the leading position with an almost (293M) visit with the most common queries being evolved around ( مدرستي، تويتر، مدرستي منصة، أذان، مترجم، يوتيوب، سبق). 

Top Social Network Platforms in Saudi Arabia

Social media users in Saudi Arabia form 79.3% of the total population with an annual change of about 8%. 99.5% of these users are accessing via mobile phones and they are spending most of their social media time watching YouTube, as Saudi Arabia’s most prominent social media platform with 30.05 million active users accounting for 89.50%. YouTube is followed by Instagram (25.66 m), Facebook (24.82 m) and Twitter (23.98 m). Then comes LinkedIn (13.36 m), Pinterest (9.77 m) and Tumblr (5.98 m).

Saudi Arabia’s Highest Popular Messenger Apps

Wherever you would like to talk to Saudis online, you can find them mostly on WhatsApp with 27.03 active users. Then Facebook Messenger comes in the second position with 17.93 active users, and after Facebook ranks Snapchat (17.93 m) and TikTok (14.94 m). There is a portion of the Saudi society that prefer to use Telegram (9.74 m), Skype (8.7 m), WeChat (7.62 m), Line (6.95 m) and Twitch (6.21 m).

Statistics Per Platform

• Facebook

• 15 million Saudis are on Facebook; 23% of whom are females and 76% male.
• 99.5% of Facebook users access via any kind of mobile phone.
• Pictures accounted for about 18% of all posts.
• The most popular Saudi-based Facebook page is Mohamad al-Arefe, followed by Islamic Muslim scholar Aid al-Qarni.
• The number of Facebook projected to reach over 18 million by 2025.
• Instagram 

• 15M are the potential audience that can be reached using adverts on Instagram. 
• 44.4% of the audience that Instagram reports is female and 55.6% is male.
• Top Instagram Influencers are Ahmad Alshugairi with 12.6 Million followers, Ahlam Alshamsi (12.4 M), and saudinews50 (12M).
• Twitter 

• The 5th most visited website in Saudi.
• 12.45 Million are the potential audience that Twitter reports can be reached with adverts on Twitter. That is, 54.3% of the total population aged +13.
• The average Saudi user tweets 5 times a day.
•  Quarter-on-quarter growth has been positive by 0.7%
• 6.4% of users are female and 93.6% male
• @MohamadAlarefe,  @salman_alodah and @Dr_alqarnee are of the most followed Saudi Twitter accounts. 
• Snapchat

• Snapchat has nearly (17.93M) active users in the region. 
• Quarter-on-quarter growth was positive by 9.5%.
• 49.6% of Snapchat users are females and 48.1% are males. 
  

The Most Used Mobile Apps in Saudi Arabia 

The best mobile apps and most used in Saudi Arabia would go for Facebook company’s products; WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, along with Snapchat. However, it is worth pointing out that mobile apps are used as such in Saudi Arabia:

The Most Downloaded Mobile Apps  

TikTok has the highest number of downloads in Saudi Arabia, and WhatsApp and Snapchat are the next in position. Other apps are as follows: 

• TikTok
• WhatsApp
• Snapchat
• Likee
• IMO
• Telegram
• Microsoft Teams
• Zoom Cloud Meetings
• Instagram
• Facebook

Overall

Saudi Arabia’s social media users climbed from 25 million to 27.8 million between 2020 and 2021. Content varies on the different social media platforms to include music, lifestyle and travel with more events and trends knocking the Twitter platform.