The announcement from the world’s largest social network came just a few weeks ago: Facebook has reached the milestone of 2 billion active users per month, with over 30 million of them in Italy alone. What are the predictions for the next 5 years? Find out with us!

Facebook has doubled its number of users in just 5 years: if these are the numbers recorded in 2017, can we imagine how crowded the world of social networks will be by 2021? In its June report, “Worldwide Social Network Users: eMarketer’s Estimates and Forecast for 2016–2021,” eMarketer gathers the predictions for the next 5 years regarding desktop and mobile social media usage, with a focus on Facebook and Twitter.

In 2017, 2.46 billion people (about a third of the global population) accessed their social media channels once a month. By 2021, the number of active users is expected to increase to 3.02 billion—while the percentage of internet users remains nearly constant, gaining 2.1 points to reach 73.1%.

Thanks to the production of increasingly social-friendly and affordable smartphones, the spread of open Wi-Fi networks, and the expansion of 3G/4G connections, mobile connectivity is following the same trend. The percentage of mobile users will rise from 81.8% in 2017 to a projected 86.7% by 2021.

The future of Facebook and Twitter in the next five years

The growing competition from other social platforms has forced Facebook and Twitter to focus heavily on video content marketing: from Stories to Live Streaming, these new features have helped solidify the dominance of both social channels, particularly on mobile, in recent years. According to eMarketer’s forecasts, by 2021, 91.7% of Facebook users will access their profiles via mobile (up from 87.2% in 2017), with this growth further supported by the Lite version of the app.

Although Twitter has been considered on the decline in recent years, between 2017 and 2021, the platform is expected to see an increase of around 35 million new users. However, this growth may not be enough to keep up with the evolution of competing platforms: it is predicted that only 9.5% of social media users will have an account on the platform by 2021.

Predictions for Italy

Western Europe accounted for more than 63% of the total internet users in 2017, with 207 million active social media users, a number that will surpass 225 million by 2021.

Italy ranks fourth in the list with a total of 25.5 million people active on social media this year. This figure is set to increase, approaching the 29.8 million users expected by 2021. In a surprising turn, Italy takes the top spot in Europe for mobile device usage, with 95.5% of Italian users accessing their social profiles via mobile apps.

Italy also leads in mobile Facebook usage: more than 97% of Italian social media users access the platform at least once a month. A completely opposite trend is observed with Twitter, which is almost unused in Italy, with a percentage that does not exceed 10% of connected users.

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