As someone who doesn’t use social media platforms in Austria for anything other than business, I still find it interesting so many people spend (waste?) so much time on them?
That includes Austrians who, although they apparently spend less time on social media than some other nationalities, still own millions of social media accounts.
According to various data organizations, Internet users in Austria at the beginning of this year stood at around 8.58 million.
That means 95.7 percent of the country is online, and the majority own at least one social media account.
How many social media users are there in Austria?
Out of those 8.58 million people in Austria, there were 7.32 million social media users, which is almost 82 percent of the population.
However… remember, it still isn’t that simple when it comes to tracking social media users, and that means one person could be responsible for five accounts (I have three accounts on one platform alone for various business purposes — two of which are not connected to my name at all).
In reality then, that probably means quite a bit fewer than 7.32 million Austrians (people in Austria) are social media users.
(I just counted up my social media accounts, and I currently run 11 of them. Austrian friends who are in business also run at least three each. So, yep, many fewer Austrians have social media accounts than social media organizations are reporting – but that’s how they make the big bucks from advertisers, eh?).
Having said that, which social media platforms are used the most in Austria?
The social media platforms Austrians use the most
According to data from the main social media companies (X, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc), there were 6.49 million people in Austria over the age of 18 using social media at the beginning of 2024.
The latest data via Stat Counter (as of end of February, 2024), shows they used the following social media platforms:
Facebook – 71.37 percent
Instagram – 12.85 percent
Pinterest – 6.63 percent
X – 3.97 percent
YouTube – 3.03 percent
Reddit – 0.92 percent
Not surprising to me there is that Austrians use Facebook more than any other social media platform, as everyone I know has a Facebook account, including myself.
Austrians using Facebook also jumped from 68.22 percent in January, to 71.37 percent in February.
What is surprising, though, is that only 3.03 percent of Austrians use YouTube, and that percentage is lower than January, 2024’s 3.74 percent
Especially as worldwide use is at 7.54 percent — more than double that of Austrians.
Data also shows Austrians’ use of Facebook is increasing, as it jumped from 68.22 percent in January, 2024 to 71.37 percent in February.
As for the other major social media platforms between January, 2024 and February, 2024, Austrians use of Instagram dropped from 13.55 percent to 12.85 percent in a month.
Their Pinterest use also dropped, from 7.1 percent to 6.63 percent in a month, while Austrians on X (aka Twitter) also fell from January’s 4.81 percent to 3.97 percent.
Austrians use of YouTube also fell from January’s 3.74 percent to 3.03 percent, while their visits to Reddit also fell from 0.96 percent to 0.92 percent.
In other words, few Austrians have any time for Reddit (myself included) and, if the data is accurate, social media use in Austria is falling across all platforms except Facebook.
Other platforms like LinkedIn and Tumblr are also used by some Austrians, but in such small numbers they are far under 0.50 percent, so pretty inconsequential.
And those are the social media platforms Austrians use the most – as of February, 2024. Are you surprised at the result, like I was?
Check out the chart kindly provided by Stat Counter yourself to check the figures.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Social Media Market Share
Note: Why do I use Stat Counter for the data I use? Because, as they filter out bots which many other data companies don’t do, including social media companies themselves, it is usually more accurate.
They also access data from 5 billion webpages daily, and use tracking codes to ensure their tracking is accurate. Data from other companies is often a lot of “guesswork”.