Over 18m Saudis use social media

Abu Dhabi: The interest of the Saudi people in social media has grown and their impact on their daily lives has increased, local media reported, quoting Saudi digitisation report. The number of Saudi users of social applications and programmes has doubled in the Kingdom during the recent years, from 8.5 million to 12.8 million users, and most recently, the number reached 18.3 million users, equivalent to 58 per cent of the total population of Saudi Arabia.

Smart phones constitute the largest platform in logging into social networks, with 260 minutes a day as an estimated average of logging per person using smart phones.

Facebook and Twitter dominate with the largest number of social media users in the Kingdom, where Facebook users reached 11 million users, while the number of Twitter users amounted to nine million users.

YouTube witnessed a high view rate, with 7 million Saudi users watching video clips at a rate of 105,900 per hour a day.

Saudi Arabia ranked first among Arab countries and second worldwide in the use of Snapchat. WhatsApp and Facebook had the top rates of social networking platforms use, with 22 per cent for WhatsApp, and 21 per cent for Facebook.