Insights >
Most Popular Platforms Social Media in APAC in 2025
New: 2025 Japanese Marketing Calendar | download for FREE >>
What are the most popular social media in APAC?
The Asia Pacific region boasts a staggering 2.5 billion social media users, surpassing any other region globally. With a remarkable 97.3% of the population accessing social media, and an astonishing 97%+ of those users doing so via mobile devices, the region presents an unprecedented business opportunity.
This mobile-first landscape, coupled with increasing internet penetration in rural areas, ensures continued growth in this dynamic market. Key players like China, India, and Indonesia contribute significantly to this massive user base.
Facebook and X are well-known in some countries, but other popular platforms are unknown in the West. APAC covers a vast region, so the most popular platforms vary significantly between countries.
This blog explores the most popular social media platforms in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Many leading Western platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, and X, are banned in China. The social media landscape in this country looks significantly different.
WeChat is the largest Chinese social media platform, with over 1.38 billion monthly active users as of September 2024.
It is an all-in-one messaging super app that provides payments, news feeds, bookings, food delivery, and more services.
Source: Statista
Douyin, also known as Chinese TikTok, reigns supreme as the most popular social media app among China’s youth. Launched in 2016 by ByteDance, Douyin experienced a meteoric rise, amassing 2 billion mobile downloads globally by 2020.
Initially captivating users with its innovative short-video creation and sharing features, Douyin has evolved significantly. The platform now integrates live streaming options and robust e-commerce tools, empowering businesses to enhance local visibility and drive sales conversions.
This growth extends beyond younger demographics, with nearly half of its 755 million monthly active users now comprising Chinese Millennials. Douyin’s impact extends beyond social media, solidifying its position as a major player in the Chinese e-commerce scene. During last year’s 11.11 shopping festival, it emerged as the second-most popular shopping platform, attracting over 480 million Chinese consumers.
Another big platform is Sina Weibo, touted as the ‘X of China’. This micro-blogging platform had 583 million monthly active users, as of June 2024. It also comes with a character limit, similar to X.
Tencent QQ is a messaging app similar to WeChat but with a slightly different demographic. The number of Tencent’s QQ active accounts has been fluctuating frequently. In the third quarter of 2024, QQ had about 562 million monthly active users, decreasing from around 571 million in the last quarter. QQ works best on desktops and is mainly used to send emails or share files.
As of February 2024, India has 462 million social media users, constituting about 32.8% of the population. 99.5% of them access social media via mobile phones.
Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp and Instagram are among the most popular platforms. LinkedIn also has a strong presence, with over 120 million members in early 2024.
As of April 2024, with 378.05 million users, India had the highest number of Facebook users worldwide.
On June 29, 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in India issued a complete ban on TikTok and 58 other apps of Chinese origin, asserting that they posed a threat to the country’s sovereignty, integrity, defence, security, and public order.
Indonesia has 139 million social media users, which is about 49.9% of the total population. The most-used platforms are YouTube, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook.
Indonesians use social media to connect with friends and family across the country’s many islands.
YouTube is steadily gaining popularity in Indonesia. There are over 139 million YouTube users, and YouTube ads reached 75% of Indonesia’s total internet user base.
97 million people, or 91.9% of Japan’s internet users, are on social media as of early 2024.
Based on the number of monthly active users, the most popular social media platforms in Japan are LINE and YouTube. The top social networking platforms are X and Instagram.
LINE has over 97 million monthly active users, which make up about 75% of the population. Categorised as a super app and similar to the Chinese app WeChat mentioned previously, LINE has many features besides messaging.
These include newsfeeds, a cashless payment system, a games library, TV streaming, digital comics, and e-commerce.
As most Japanese internet users have LINE, regardless of age or gender, LINE Ads is one of the most effective ways for businesses to get smartphone ad impressions.
Read our most popular blog post on why LINE is Japan’s most popular platform →
YouTube has over 78.6 million monthly active users in Japan, over 60% of the population. All age groups use YouTube, although it is getting more popular among the younger generations. As younger users turn away from traditional TV and more toward digital content, YouTube is anticipated to grow.
X has 73.4 million monthly active users or just under 50% of the population. It is very popular among celebrities and influencers and is mainly used to stay up-to-date on current events or to get updates on topics users are interested in.
Other popular Japan-specific social media platforms include Niconico (video sharing), Snow (selfie camera app), Ameba (blogging).
During the first quarter of 2024, there were 86.75 million social media users in the Philippines. The internet users in the Philippines devoted an average of 3 hours and 34 minutes daily to social media usage. In contrast, their counterparts in Japan spent 47 minutes per day on social media during the same period.
The most popular platforms are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
As of 2024, there are 49.1 million active social media users in Thailand, which equates to around 68.3% of the population.
Facebook is the most popular, with 49.1 million users. YouTube comes in next, with 44.2 million users.
LINE is the most popular messenger app, with 95% of mobile Internet users having it on their phones.
According to Facebook IQ, 86% of users used Facebook Stories to learn about new products or services, while 74% said they make more online purchases due to Facebook Stories. This indicates that many Thai people use Facebook to gain information and shop for new products.
According to DataReportal’s 2024 report, there were 19.2 million social media users in Taiwan as of early 2024. This equals 80.2% of the population.
The average daily time using social media is 1 hour and 59 minutes, and the average number of social media accounts per user is 6.1.
The most popular is YouTube, with 19.2 million users. Close behind are Facebook, with 16.95 million users, and LINE, which is used by 90.9% of the population. Instagram is also quite popular, with nearly 68.1% of internet users using the platform.
93.4% of the entire South Korean population are social media users, at 48.34 million. However, the time spent and the number of accounts is relatively low compared to other Asian nations.
The average time spent per day on social media is 1 hour and 6 minutes, while the average number of social media accounts owned per internet user is 4.3.
YouTube is the most popular platform in South Korea, with 44.3 million users. Kakaotalk is next, with 87% of South Korea’s population using it. Kakaotalk is a messaging app similar to WhatsApp.
Like LINE, Kakaotalk also allows brands and companies to create’ PlusFriend’ pages.
Brands can publish updates to their page or send direct messages to their followers, such as coupons, product information, photos, videos, and event information.
Instagram has 20.4 million users, and TikTok is gaining popularity with 6.95 million users aged 18 and above.
There are billions of social media users across APAC. With many platforms, creating the right content for the appropriate platform that matches your product, service and target audience is critical.
Arming yourself with Japanese social media marketing experts is a surefire way to reach your target customers in Japan.
Contact us at DMFA to learn more about our services and how our bilingual consultants can assist you.
Simply fill in the form and our team will get back to you as soon as possible →
