According to stats from 2014, Facebook is the first social media platform in South Africa that has seen exactly equal take-up by males and females. The SA Social Media Landscape 2015 report by World Wide Worx and Fuseware shows that this market, which usually displays a slight male bias in the use of the Internet and e-commerce, shows evidence that social media is now mainstream. The even split between males and females on Facebook in South Africa shows them at 5,6-million users apiece.
Out of all social media platforms that are used within SA, excluding instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Facebook remained the most popular of them all, with 13 million users actively posting, sharing and liking content on the platform in South Africa. The stats show that Mark Zuckerburg’s company is followed by YouTube and Twitter in terms of popularity amongst people in the country.
Of the 13 million South African users that are active on Facebook, which represents a quarter of the total population, most of these people access the social media giant via apps or browsers on their mobile phones. A figure of 10 million people use their mobiles to interact with friends on the platform, while 1.6 million use basic feature phones and 1.6 make use of tablets to interact on Facebook.
Three economic hubs in South Africa experience the highest growth on Facebook, with Johannesburg seeing 55% increases, Pretoria 49% and Cape Town growing by 44%, closely resembling a representation of the urban population in the country. Going against the grain, however, is Nelspruit which continues to show high growth of 40% despite not being an urban powerhouse.
Recent research shows that South Africans spend an average of 5 hours and 6 minutes using the Internet, with the average daily use of social media recorded at 3 hours. What this means is that more than half of the time people in SA spend online is dedicated to social media.
With regards to Facebook, South Africa is not a follower of the major global trend which has recently seen younger users decreasing in number as a major segment of the Facebook user base. While teenagers in other countries around the world are giving up on Facebook, the 13-18 age group remains the single biggest on Facebook in South Africa thanks to around 2,5 million users.
The number of YouTube and Instagram users in South Africa increased in recent years, showing the power of visual media. Stats taken in August 2014 show that YouTube had reached an active user base of 7,2-million South Africans, with only Facebook counting more users in South Africa. Instagram also showed impressive growth from 680,000 active users in 2013 to 2,68 million in 2015.
Twitter’s previously dramatic rise has slowed down over time, although still growing at a decent pace each year, but the disappointing news came recently in the form of MXIT’s collapse. The South African start-up’s successful story came to an end, with news that the company had shut down its commercial operations and would be transferring its intellectual property and assets to the Reach Trust, its charitable arm.
