Instagram Demographics in 2021: Important User Stats for Marketers

Instagram demographics give marketers a way to get to know the people behind the numbers.

And with more than one billion people on the social network across the globe, there’s a lot of people to get to know.

Demographic insights should inform your Instagram marketing strategy, especially if you’re new to the platform. You can also use demographics to compare your current Instagram audience to audiences you’d like to reach, whether through organic marketing or Instagram ads.

Learn about age, location, gender, and other Instagram demographics so you can tailor your strategy and content for the right audience.

General Instagram demographics

Benchmark your Instagram demographic research against these key stats:

• 1.2 billion: The number of unique visitors that were active on Instagram in October 2020, according to SEMrush.
• 500 million: The number of accounts that view Instagram Stories every day (as of 2019).
• 1.16 billion: The potential audience reach for advertisers on Instagram (as of 2020).
• 90 million: The number of people who tap on Instagram product tags each month (as of 2018).
• 9 in 10 people on Instagram follow a business account (as of 2019).
• 2.54 billion: The number of daily active people using one of Facebook’s family of apps (as of Q3 2020).*
• $25.57: Average revenue per person for Facebook’s family of apps in 2019.
• 3%: The margin of error Facebook estimates is present in its Family metrics (as of 2020).

*Official Instagram stats appear in Facebook reporting under Family metrics, which estimate the number of unique people who use Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and/or WhatsApp over a given period. Less than 3 in 10 Americans know that Instagram and Whatsapp are owned by Facebook.

People who use Instagram are among the most likely to be active on other social networks— especially Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. A recent poll of users aged 16-64 finds that almost half of Instagram users also use TikTok.

Source: Hootsuite

Instagram age demographics

• 25-34-year-olds represent the largest advertising audience on Instagram, followed closely by the 18-24-year old age group
• Men slightly outnumber women in these age groups. However, women outnumber men among users 35 and up

Source: Hootsuite

The younger the Instagram user, the more likely they are to use the social network multiple times per day. A poll by Ipsos breaks down the percentage of people who logon more than once a day by age:

• 18-24 years old: 67%
• 25-34 years old: 60%
• 35-44 years old: 49%
• 45-54 years old: 43%
• 55+ years old: 31%

11% of U.S. parents say their 9-11 year-olds use Instagram, finds a poll by Pew Research Center. Instagram requires account holders to be at least 13 years old, but younger users can run accounts managed by parents or guardians.

Source: Pew Research Center

Instagram location demographics

In terms of advertising reach, the top countries and territories with the largest audiences on Instagram are the United States, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia. Between October 2019 and 2020, India saw a 20% growth in its ad audience size—a pace that could soon see the nation overtake the United States for the top position.

Source: Hootsuite

Spotlight on the United States

Stats based on Pew Research Center’s most recent findings

• 37% of adults in the U.S. use Instagram
• Only 8% of adults in the U.S. over the age of 65 use Instagram, compared with 46% for Facebook and 11% for LinkedIn
• 43% of women in the U.S use Instagram, compared with 31% men
• Instagram is most popular with Hispanic adults (51%), followed by Black (40%), and White (33%) adults
• The majority of Instagram users in the U.S. live in urban areas (46%), followed by suburban (35%), and rural (21%)
• 43% of U.S. adults are college graduates, while 37% have some college and 33% may or may not have finished high school
• 6 in 10 Instagram users use the social network every day

Spotlight on India

• India was one of the first markets to test Instagram Reels and the Reels tab
• India was also one of the first countries where Instagram launched Live Rooms, where up to four people can go live together
• India is the biggest market by users for Facebook and Whatsapp
• TikTok has been banned in India since June 2020
• Instagram Lite, a small and fast Android version of the app, was released in India in December 2020 for people in the region with limited access to data. The app does not support Reels, IGTV or Instagram Shopping
• Languages offered on Instagram Lite include Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu
• 63% of the most popular influencers in India work in entertainment, finds a report from ClanConnect
• Food, education, finance, and career-focused influencers receive the most engagement, ClanConnect finds
• 2 out of 5 songs shared most globally on Reels are from Indian artists

Facebook’s average revenue per user is 11 times higher in the U.S. and Canada than it is in the Asia-Pacific region. According to Facebook, the difference is “primarily due to the size and maturity” of online and mobile ad markets in each region. Stats for Instagram have not been released, but they’re likely similar.

Facebook’s 2020 Annual Report notes the percentages of duplicate accounts are “meaningfully higher in developing markets such as the Philippines and Vietnam as compared to more developed markets.” By and large, the largest relative growth in Instagram ad audience size took place in East Asian countries.

Source: Hootsuite

Notice anything missing? Yes, Instagram has been blocked in China since 2014.

Instagram gender demographics

When considering gender demographics on Instagram, it should be noted that the site provides three options: male, female, and not specified. While “not specified” is available, a great deal of research and reporting is limited to binary classifications.

• 51% of Instagram’s ad audience identifies as female, and 49% identifies as male. (Facebook’s ad tools do not report data for non-binary genders.)

Spotlight on the United States

• Among adults in the United States, 43% of women are on Instagram, compared with 31% of men finds Pew Research Center
• 62% of new U.S. users on Instagram identify as female, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center study, which is limited to binary genders. 38% identity as male

Spotlight on India

• 72.5% of Instagram users in India identify as male, compared with 27.5% female, finds Statista
• More than half of women living in India are unaware of the existence of mobile Internet

Source: Statista

Instagram interests demographics

No matter the Instagram demographic, people use the social network to delve into their interests. Recent research commissioned by Facebook finds that 91% of people polled say they use Instagram to follow an interest. In India, it’s 98%.

The research finds that the top interests on Instagram are travel (45%), music (44%), and food and drink (43%). Bucking the trend, people in India favour technology as their top interest. In Argentina, Brazil, Korea, and Turkey, film ranks in the top three. Among parents in the UK, the top five interests are food, travel, fashion, beauty, and unsurprisingly, parenting.

Source: Facebook

We break down key Instagram demographics by interest below.

Travel

• Among U.S. leisure travellers aged 18-34, Facebook’s family of apps are the top online channels for discovering destinations.
• Hootsuite research finds the Fridays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. is when the Instagram demographic with travel interests is most active.

Sports

• 1.3K: Number of athletes from international sports events active on Instagram. Each athlete has an average of 198K followers.
• 1 in 3 people polled by Facebook have used Facebook and Instagram to follow global sports events, 25% of whom are women.
• 60% of Instagram conversations about the women’s national football team in the U.S. were by women. In the U.K, the gender dynamic on football convos overall swung to 40% women.
• Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed athlete on Instagram and the second most followed account, with 252 million followers. Dwayne Johnson and Lionel Messi rank in the top ten most popular accounts.

Music

• 4 of the top ten most followed Instagram accounts are musicians: Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Beyonce, and Justin Bieber.
• Nearly half of the top 50 most-followed people on Instagram are musicians.
• 70% of music listeners in Canada and 67% of music listeners in the US follow artists on Facebook and Instagram to stay on top of artist news.
• 1 in 4 weekly Instagram users in the U.S. watches Instagram Stories about live music. In Canada, the ratio increases to 1 in 3.

Events

• 76% of people polled keep track of events (sports, conferences, etc.) on Instagram.

An overwhelming 90% of people on Instagram follow brands. But they don’t just follow your business for pretty pictures. Across 13 markets surveyed by Ipsos, the majority of people want to see brands post fun (55%) real (53%), and creative (53%) content.

Put Instagram demographics to work in your social marketing strategy. When you get to know the people behind the numbers, engagement and follower numbers tend to go up.

Ready to put your Instagram user demographic insights to work? Start scheduling and publishing posts alongside all your other social media channels directly from the Hootsuite dashboard. Try it free today.

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