21 WhatsApp Statistics Marketers Must Know in 2024
But first, getting a good idea of how WhatsApp users compare to your target audience is vital.
Is your brand focused on women between the ages of 55 and 64? High-income American adults? Brazilian internet users who don’t mind ads? Whatever your goals, WhatsApp may be the key to kicking that social media marketing game up a notch.
Let’s look at some data.
Bonus: Download our free WhatsApp for Customer Care guide to get more pointers on how to use WhatsApp Business to get higher conversion rates, better customer experience, lower costs, and higher customer satisfaction.
General WhatsApp statistics
1. Globally, WhatsApp has about three billion monthly users.
Yes, that’s a billion WhatsApp users. The messaging and video calling app launched in 2009 and quickly proved it has that Boom Boom Pow (much like the Black Eyed Peas song that also came out in 2009).
To put that in perspective, earth’s population is around 8 billion, which means around 4 in every 10 people use Whatsapp monthly—that’s a market size that social media managers can’t ignore.
Source: Statista
2. Over 51 million people download WhatsApp every month.
According to a January 2024 Statista study, WhatsApp has every other messenger app beat for monthly downloads. In fact, other apps aren’t even close: the next most-downloaded app is Snapchat, which has about 10 million fewer.
Telegram has 36.7 million downloads, and fourth place goes to—oh, lookie there, it’s WhatsApp Business.
Source: Statista
We’ll talk more about WhatsApp Business later in this post… for now, you can digest the news that together, WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business have 79 million monthly downloads.
3. Half of all social media users say they use social media to keep in touch with friends and family.
Why is WhatsApp so popular? The results of this 2023 Statista study can shed some light on the app’s success, “keeping in touch with friends and family” is the number one reason people use social media.
Because WhatsApp is an app focused entirely on messaging, voice, and video calls, it’s perfect for keeping in touch with people you personally know. Unlike other platforms like TikTok or Facebook messenger, the majority of time spent on WhatsApp is devoted to private conversation, not entertainment from strangers.
Source: Statista
WhatsApp user statistics
4. The gender breakdown of WhatsApp users is relatively even.
Some social media platforms skew wildly in favour of a single gender. For example, Pinterest users lean female and most Twitter (X) users are male. But WhatsApp’s gender breakdown isn’t quite as conclusive.
According to data available from We Are Social, from We Are Social, 47.6% are women and 52.3% are men, which is about as close as it gets to 50/50.
Source: We Are Social
5. 29% of American adults have used WhatsApp.
This stat doesn’t cover WhatsApp’s user base opinions, just whether a person has ever used it.
But 29% of the U.S. adults the Pew Research Center studied in 2023 said that they have used Whatsapp at least once. It’s in sixth place behind YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn, in that order.
Source: Pew Research Centre
Still, 29% is a good chunk—meaning that a good chunk of Americans are familiar with the platform and have some experience using WhatsApp to communicate.
6. 21% of U.S. teens use WhatsApp.
While 2 in 10 teens say they’ve ever used WhatsApp, the messenger app isn’t the most popular with the youth: 93% use YouTube, 63% use TikTok, and 60% use Snapchat.
Again, the number of teen WhatsApp users is still significant… just not as significant as the number of teen users on other platforms. Marketers focusing on a discerning teenage audience, take note.
Source: Pew Research Center
7. 16% of social media users say WhatsApp is their favourite social media platform…
It’s hard to pick a favourite, but WhatsApp is the number one choice for plenty of folks online. It’s only beat by Instagram.
Source: We Are Social
8. … and men and women between the ages of 35 and 54 have a particular fondness for WhatsApp.
When favourite social media platforms are broken down by age and gender, WhatsApp is the top choice in many categories: women aged 35 to 64, 45 to 54, 55 to 64, and men aged 35 to 64, 45 to 54, and 55 to 64.
So, regardless of gender identity, WhatsApp is a worldwide fave for people over 35 (and should be a favourite for social media marketers targeting that age group).
Source: We Are Social
9. More than half of Hispanic and Asian Americans use WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is most favoured by people of colour (according to data from Pew Research Centre). 20% of white respondents say they have used the platform, 31% of Black respondents have used it, and 54% and 51% of Hispanic and Asian respondents said they have used WhatsApp, respectively.
Psstt: this data doesn’t include non-English speakers, and Pew notes this for the Asian category specifically, indicating that the actual data for that group is likely higher.
Source: Pew Research Center
10. 39% of American college graduates use WhatsApp.
When looking at education data, WhatsApp is most popular with Americans who graduated college—39% of respondents in a 2023 study said they ever used the app. While 23% of U.S. adults who have completed some post-secondary education have used WhatsApp, and 25% in the “high school or less” category have.
Looking at other platforms studied (89% of American college graduates have used YouTube, and 70% have used Facebook), Whatsapp doesn’t quite compare. However, it is more popular with college grads than TikTok or Snapchat.
So, if your brand’s target audience is college graduates, WhatsApp isn’t a bad place to invest some marketing dollars—but consider a Facebook or YouTube strategy, too.
Source: Pew Research Centre
11. 90% of Brazilian adults use WhatsApp.
A 2023 survey by the brains at Pew Research Center reported that WhatsApp is the most popular social media site in middle-income countries (including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia and South Africa).
Platforms like Twitter and Telegram are the least popular in these parts of the world.
Source: Pew Research Center
Social marketers should consider this geographical data when considering their audience.
If your brand plans to expand to South America, for example, it’s worth noting that WhatsApp is the most popular social media site used in the continent’s two largest countries. This seems like the perfect opportunity to use WhatsApp for customer service.
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