Instagram surpasses 2 billion active monthly users… Or does it?

Meta has announced that Instagram now has over two billion monthly active users worldwide. Four years after hitting the 1 billion mark, the number has doubled, closing in on Facebook and its 2.96 billion users.

However, does this show the real situation? Are the active monthly users real 2 billion people spending their time on Instagram? That’s definitely something to discuss.

Meta disclosed the information in its Q3 financial report for 2022. It writes that there is 2.93 billion family daily active people on average for September 2022, and 3.71 billion family monthly active people. In other words, those are the people using Meta’s entire family of apps worldwide. As for Facebook alone, daily active users were 1.98 billion on average for September 2022 and it had 2.96 billion monthly active users as of 30 September.

In June 2018, Instagram surpassed its first billion monthly active users. It has undergone major changes since then, shifting focus to Reels and adding ads pretty much everywhere. Bloomberg writes that the rise in Instagram’s user numbers is “a sign of the social media giant’s shifting makeup.” Now, the number of monthly active users sure has grown, no doubt about that. But does the “2 billion users” mean 2 billion people? That’s something I wanted to discuss briefly.

First of all, I’m sure you’ve spotted bots on Instagram as I am. Those also count as “users” but they sure don’t use Instagram like you or me. And second, one person can have multiple accounts on the platform. In fact, Instagram even encourages you to make another account if you already don’t have one. For example, I run several accounts. Many other artists, creators, and small business owners do it as well, separating their personal stuff from their work. It’s not disclosed anywhere whether one account counts as one user… Or it is one person holding multiple accounts. Either way, I doubt there are really 2 billion people using Instagram, but I guess Meta can say that it has 2 billion active “users” – and anyone can interpret it at their will.

[via PetaPixel]