Who Uses Telegram?

The CEO of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, was arrested at an airport north of Paris on Saturday. According to prosecutors, the 39-year-old billionaire is being held as part of an ongoing cybercrime investigation over the company’s alleged failure to combat the use of the platform for illicit activities. Telegram has denied wrongdoing.

The arrest has raised debate on several fronts, including criticism from whistleblower Edward Snowden who has called it an “assault on the basic human rights of speech and association.” Although French President Emmanuel Macron has said it was not a “political decision”, experts speculate that Durov’s arrest could have far-reaching consequences, including potential disruptions to Russian military communications.

Telegram is a popular means of communication in many parts of the world. Survey data from Statista’s Consumer Insights shows that 45 percent of online respondents in India said they regularly used it in a poll conducted between July 2023 and June 2024. In Brazil, nearly four in ten online respondents said the same, while around a third of respondents reported using the platform in Mexico, South Africa and Spain. In several northern European countries Telegram was less popular, with France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden and Poland all reporting usage at 10-13 percent. Statista did not poll respondents in Russia, but according to independent Russian pollster the Levada Center, around 51 percent of Russian citizens reported using the platform as of March 2024.