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Social Media in Japan
Before we move on to discussing which social media platforms are currently most popular in Japan, let’s have a quick look at the Japanese Internet users.
As of January 2022, Japan’s population is 125.8 million people, and 118.3 million of them are Internet users, which makes up 94% of the total population!
In terms of social media, it is estimated that around 102 million people use social media, coming up to 81.1% of total population. A recent analysis by Kepios revealed that just between 2021 and 2022, the social media users in Japan increased by 8.2 million, or 8.7%.
In the 5th place, we have TikTok, with 15.2 million users. This is an equivalent of 12.8% of the total Internet users. Especially recently, following the global shift from static to dynamic content, TikTok is becoming more and more popular, especially among the younger audience.
Similar to what’s happening around the world, TikTok is gaining more and more popularity. It operates on so-called WTF principal:
In the 4th place, we have Facebook. In Japan, Facebook has around 15.5 million users and rather than connecting with family and friends, people use it for business. Tt is a good platform for business networking and making professional connections. Over 98.5% of people access Facebook via mobile phone.
Coming in number 3, with 46.1 million users, we’ve got Instagram. It is especially popular among younger people, from teenagers to early 30s. Over the past years, Instagram has been rapidly growing in Japan, and is now used by over 40% of the population. As it is a very visual app, food and fashion brands are really popular on the platform.
2nd place belongs to Twitter, with 59 million users. Japanese Twitter is 2nd largest in the world, right after the USA. Twitter is an attractive option as it allows users to stay anonymous and share their opinions. Similarly to other platforms, it is mostly used by younger people, and its popularity decreases with age.
LINE is the true king of Japanese social media. It first started as a messenger app, similar to WhatsApp, but it is now much much more than that. It has over 94 million monthly active users, which is over 72% of the society. LINE is also the 2nd most downloaded app on the Japanese app store right after PayPay (contactless payment system).
Apart from messaging, LINE now offers over 100 services Japanese Internet users interact with on a daily basis, and with such wide market reach, it is a very powerful marketing tool.
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