UAE Social Media Statistics

The total population in the UAE in 2022 is 10.08 million.  99% of the population are active internet users.  98.99% use social media. People in the UAE spend an average of 3 hours per day on social media while the daily average time spent using the internet is 8.5 hours which is an hour more than in 2021.  Most use their cell phones to connect to the internet and social media.  Falling smartphone costs allow people from all walks of life to own phones and gain access to the internet.  YouTube has the greatest following with 8.72 million users which is 87.4% of the total internet users with Facebook and Instagram coming in at second and third place.  A very large percentage of Instagram’s 6.67 million users are young people, especially teenagers. 

People use social media for different reasons.  53.4% use social media to keep in touch with their family and friends which is very important since over 85% of the population are expatriate.  34% use social media to fill their spare time followed closely by those who are reading news stories and others who are finding products to purchase.

TikTok is gaining ground and has passed all expectations in terms of popularity and reach in a fairly short time span.  The app has an e-commerce feature which allows users to shop directly on the platform.  This new feature is making businesses take notice of TikTok for their marketing strategy.  Short videos are the rage now due to the popularity of Instagram reels and YouTube shorts.  Businesses are taking notice and are starting to produce the short videos.

You may be thinking, “That’s a lot of interesting statistics, but what does it really matter.  There are people all over the world working on the internet and active on social media.”  And you would be correct, however, only approximately 8% of the total population of the UAE is Christian with less than 1.5% being Christ followers. There are ministries who are focusing on sharing the Gospel via social media, and there are other ministries that are focused on follow-up.  Pray that God will prick the hearts of Emiratis and others in the UAE as they scroll through these posts full of Hope.