Before I start, I need to thank Simon Kemp for compiling this and for Hootsuite and We are social for paying for it. 

The full report is free to download, it's not gated and is available here.

Let's walk you through my highlights.  

"We’re still seeing solid growth in digital adoption and activity around the world.

The data reveal that hundreds of millions of people started using the internet and social media for the first time over the past 12 months, and there are a host of impressive new user milestones in this quarter’s data too."

The global state of digital today

  • Fresh updates to the UN’s population data reveal that there are 7.98 billion people living on Earth in July 2022, with that figure climbing by 66 million (+0.8 percent) over the past year.

  • Global mobile users grew to 5.34 billion by the start of Q3 2022, with smartphones accounting for almost 4 in 5 of the mobile handsets in use today. The global mobile population has grown by 93 million since this time last year, with almost 67 percent of the world’s total population now using some form of mobile phone.

  • Internet users have increased by 3.7 percent over the past 12 months, reaching 5.03 billion in July 2022. Year-on-year growth of 178 million new users has pushed global internet penetration up to 63.1 percent.

  • Social media users grew by 227 million over the past year, reaching 4.70 billion by the start of July 2022. The global social media user base has increased by more than 5 percent over the past 12 months, with the latest global total now equivalent to 59 percent of the world’s total population.

While these numbers all point to a deceleration in digital growth compared with the impressive increases that we saw during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, current trends indicate that two-thirds of the world’s total population should be online by this time next year, and social media users should reach the equivalent of 60 percent of the global population not long afterwards.

Digital Inflection point

As a result, it’s safe to assume that we’re now very close to – or perhaps even already at – an inflection point of digital growth, and we should expect to see growth curves continue to flatten out from here on.

But it’s important to stress that this deceleration is inevitable; with the majority of the world’s population now connected, it would be statistically impossible for user numbers to continue growing indefinitely at the rates we saw in 2020 and 2021.

Moreover, the fact that we’ve arrived at this inflection point proves that connected tech is now embedded in the lives of most people around the world.

Consequently, the key question is no longer whether our audiences are actually using these technologies, but what they’re using them for, and how we can take full advantage of the valuable – and constantly evolving – opportunities that these technologies present."

Time spent on social

"There has been a lot of chatter on social media in recent weeks about the amount of time that people spend using social platforms, but – unfortunately – some of the most widely referenced data has been misrepresented.

So, to help make sense of what’s really going on, our Digital 2022 July Global Statshot Report includes two separate charts on the time spent using social media apps: one that uses data from data.ai to show average time per month, and another that uses data from Sensor Tower to show average time per day."


"Assuming that the typical person sleeps for between 7 and 8 hours per day, these latest numbers suggest that TikTok users now spend close to 5 percent of their waking hours watching TikTok videos."


"YouTube isn’t far behind TikTok though, with the platform’s Android users spending an average of 23.2 hours per month using the YouTube app between January and March 2022.

However, it’s worth remembering that a considerably larger share of YouTube viewing will take place on laptop and desktop computers and connected TVs compared with TikTok.

As a result, there’s a good chance that each individual viewer still spends more time watching YouTube videos across all devices than they do watching TikTok videos.

Indeed, this hypothesis is backed up by another set of findings from data.ai, which shows that YouTube captures the greatest amount of total, cumulative time spent by all users across all mobile apps."

"GWI reports that the typical social media user now spends 2 hours and 29 minutes per day across all social platforms, which adds up to roughly 75½ hours per month.

That means we now spend more than 3 full days using social media each month, equating to roughly 15 percent of our waking lives."

Use of social media for brand research

In this slide it's clear the impact how social media is growing in its use by the modern buyer for brand research.  While Google is important, it tends to be used to answer questions, "where is my nearest Indian takeaway?", where as social media is used to answer business related issues "how can I get help with my ERP system?".

It's clear that brands need to be empowering their teams, not to share brochures, other research, here, shows that people come to social, to be social and not read brochures.

If I want a brochure, I go to Google or a companies website.  In fact most employee advocacy projects are actually teaching the algorithm and your customers to avoid you. 

Having a strategic plan by brands to make sure they are found through social search is critical today. 


Use of ad-blockers

Finally it's worth mentioning that power that ad-blockers have on the internet to free us from the skurge of advertising. 


And here are the reasons for using ad-blockers.