Between 2020 and 2021, the global coronavirus outbreak caused social media adoption to skyrocket, and as the trend appears to be normalizing, users who hopped on social media in the past two years will keep themselves connected: By 2028, social platforms in the county will have acquired a population reach of 79 percent.
Being social: Italy’s favorite online activity
Social media are undeniably one of the favorite digital environments in Italy, with users spending a large amount of their online time being social online. In March 2023, Italian users spent over 21 hours per month online interacting with member communities like social networks, and an additional 11 hours chatting on instant messaging platforms. Liking content and sending private messages to other users appeared to be the most common social media activities, with over six in 10 users in Italy reporting engaging in these activities while visiting social media platforms. Posting content such as photos, videos, comments, and status updates appeared to be less popular activities, but only one in 10 Italian social media users reported using social media only passively.Most used social media
Meta platforms consistently rank as the most used social media platforms in Italy. While mobile users in the country presented one of the highest usage rates for messaging and chat app WhatsApp, as of the end of 2022, market leader Facebook was used by almost eight in 10 Italians. The web version of the popular social media platform had the highest market share in Italy, with almost 71 percent of all social media visits being directed to Facebook as of December 2022.Social videos were also among the most engaging type of content Italian users researched on the internet, with YouTube reporting a reach of 95 percent of internet users at the beginning of 2022. YouTube was the favorite social media for Gen Z users in Italy, with approximately 74 percent of young Italians reporting to engage with the platform’s mobile version in April 2023. Additionally, while live streaming videos are not the most popular content, with less than three in 10 internet users reporting watching this type of videos s of the third quarter of 2022, the most popular Italian-language streamers on Twitch can still count on sizable audiences. As of August 2023, Twitch streamers POW3Rtv reported over 1.95 million followers, while second-ranked ilMasseo had over 1.72 million Twitch users engaging with his live content.