S.Korea sees under 10 mn Facebook users per month: Report

The number of monthly users in South Korea of the Meta-run social media platform Facebook last month fell to under 10 million.

Mobile Index, a big data analysis solution company, on Thursday said the number of monthly active users of Facebook nationwide last month was 9,795,810, down 16.3% from the same month last year and the 18th consecutive month of decline after 13,417,639 in August 2021.

The finding is interpreted as showing the movement of social media users to platforms other than Facebook. Instagram, another Meta-owned service, had 18,528,538 users last month, up 7%, with the activity of teen users standing out.

A survey by the Korea Press Foundation found that 80.3% of elementary, middle and high school students had experience using Facebook in 2019 but just 46.1% did so last year. Instagram, however, saw its rate nearly double from 41% to 81.6% over the same period.

Among messenger apps, 30% of elementary, middle and high school students used Facebook's Messenger last year, nearly half of the rate of 56.1% in 2019. The percentage of those using Instagram Direct, however, jumped from 20% to 52.3%.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com