There are now 5 billion social media accounts

As divisive as social media has become recently, it looks like it will still continue to flourish moving forward as a study has revealed that the number of social media accounts now equal more than half of humanity.

Agence-France-Presse reports that media monitoring company Meltwater and social media agency We are Social have published a study revealing that there are now more than 5 billion active social media accounts online. Facebook users make up the bulk of the accounts with 2.19 billion, while Instagram took second place with 1.65 billion accounts. Placing third is TikTok, which currently has 1.56 billion active accounts.

While the study did caution that exact numbers cannot be given because people may make accounts using different identities or some of the active accounts may be automated ones, the current number now equals 62.3 percent of the human population. The number of social media accounts rose by 5.6 percent in the previous year, outpacing the 0.9 percent increase in the world's population.

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The continued rise of active social media accounts comes at a time when social media giants like Facebook and Instagram are being scrutinized and facing lawsuits for their alleged negative effects on the population.

Back in October last year, attorneys general of 33 states including California and New York filed a lawsuit against Meta claiming that Instagram let young children and teenagers become addicted to social media use.

Short form video site TikTok has also been sued by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance exposed its young users to inappropriate content by lying about how much drugs, nudity, alcohol, and profanity can be found on the app. The lawsuit is asking for TikTok to be slapped with financial penalties and an order to bar it from “engaging in deceptive and unfair conduct.”

The United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy even released a report in May last year that pointed out how social media has exposed teenagers to “extreme, inappropriate, and harmful content” that can “normalize” self-harm and suicide.

I issued a new Advisory on the urgent need to make social media safer for young people. Growing evidence shows social media can be associated with #MentalHealth harms, and it's time we take action to protect the health and well-being of our youth. https://t.co/SUnM8QmZBn

-- Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) May 23, 2023

A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports back in 2022 also showed that social media could play a role in teens developing depression, no matter their personality beforehand.

In what may be a response to the lawsuits it is facing, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, introduced new safety measures for its teen users.

With the new features, users under the age of 16 can no longer be messaged by strangers online and they can now only be messaged and added to groups by people that they already follow on Instagram and Facebook.

These settings are now the default settings for users under 16 years old and those who are using supervised accounts will have to get their parent's permission before this setting can be changed.

Meta also revealed that there are plans to launch a feature that would protect teens from being sent “unwanted and potentially inappropriate messages” from people that they are already connected to on Instagram and Facebook.