In 2016, 53% of Iranians had a social network profile, according to a new report.
Estimates show the number of worldwide social media users reached 1.96 billion, which shows 26% of the world’s population are active on social media networks.
This is while social media users worldwide are expected to grow to 2.5 billion by 2018, Asriran reported.
Morteza Mousavian, the head of Information Technology and Digital Media Development Center, discussed the report on Iran’s digital media and said “53% of Iranians at least have one account on a social media website”.
He added that an Iranian user spends a daily average of four to nine hours on social networking while the same number for US users is 3.6 hours per day.
Head of the center, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, said Iran has 4.5 million university students, 40% of which are majoring in engineering and 17% in the field of electronics and IT.
“According to unofficial reports, the Internet penetration rate is 80% in Iran while the global average is 46%. It also has been estimated that there are about 40 million smartphone users in the country,” he said.
Mousavian said Iran has 20 million gamers who spend annually 14.6 billion hours playing games.
“Since Iran is a deeply politicized country, one can easily predict that the most visited websites in Iran are news related,” he said.
Then he listed the websites most visited by Iranians as follows: news, advertisement, gaming, software, social networks and education-related websites.
Mousavian noted that Iran has the largest number of LinkedIn users compared to other regional countries.
“Iranians are trying to utilize Internet as best as they can and make the most out of it,” he said.
