Social media in Turkey - statistics & facts
Leading social media platforms in the country
Although it showed a decreasing trend recently, Facebook held more than one-third of the social media market share, which made it the market leader in the country. Nevertheless, the popular photo and video-sharing app, Instagram became the most used platform by Turkish social media users, accounting for nearly 92 percent penetration rate. Aside from WhatsApp, internet users prefer using many other social media sites and applications for different purposes. The video-sharing website YouTube came in first in the ranking of most popular social media platforms for news among Turkish people, while the photo and video-sharing application Instagram placed second.Social media users
During the COVID-19 pandemic, staying at home with social distance restrictions, feelings of loneliness, and a desire to be in touch with loved ones caused people to spend more time on social media channels. Turks were no exception to this, using social networking services mostly to follow family and friends. Moreover, the wide spread of social media affected individuals to start using it for following and reading news and articles besides mainstream media outlets. For more than half of the population, reading news stories was a pressing reason to use social media.In Turkey, the share of the general population who use the internet for social networking has been growing each year for every age group. Since there are plenty of apps with something to offer for every taste and interest, it appears that the social media platforms will keep their popularity among Turkish people in the years to come.