20m Instagram Users in Iran

Instagram is now the second most used social media application in Iran with some 20 million downloads so far, according to a new report by a local tech blog.

The photo-sharing application, which was bought by the much larger Facebook in 2012 for a cool $1 billion, has welcomed social media marketing experts and wannabe photographers in their hordes in the past several years.  

A report published by weblog Techarasa in association with NazarBazaar, a local market report agency, said more than 3,700 people responded to a survey on how they use social media.

In the survey, over 80% of the female respondents said they now use Instagram every day of the week, while men were slightly less likely to log on daily at just over 70%. The median score for both men and women was in the mid-70% range.

Only around 16% respondents said they check the application “every two or three days.”

 App Addiction

In response to how many times they viewed the app, on average 40% of men and women said they use it less than five times per day. While a 36% said they open it more than five times per day.

Moreover, when answering the question on how long their sessions are, respondents came overwhelmingly in the ‘11 to 20 minutes per session’ section. The next biggest group of users stood at ‘6 to 10 minutes’.

 Midnight Surfers

Interestingly, following other trends from previous reports about Internet viewing in Iran, night time Instagram surfing seemed to be the most popular.

According to the results of the survey, the majority of both men and women are likely to view Instagram from 7pm to 10pm. The second biggest group of views was from 10pm to 1am.

However, unlike Europe, which traditionally sees a spike during working day lunch hours, Iran on the other hand waits until dinner time and later to look at social media.

 Hobbies & Entertainment

Overwhelmingly, the majority said the main reason they use the social media app was for hobbies and entertainment purposes and among them 50% were after-dinner users, both female and male.

The second biggest group, around 17%, used the applications for chatting with friends and family, the report states.

Around 10% of both sexes use the application to meet new people, however, these figures are indicative of specific age groups, mostly around the ages of 24-35.

Interestingly, an increasing number of people are using Instagram to find new products and services; again, this is a combined 10% of men and women.

In addition, comprising of less than 10% each, some people use the application for promoting their brand’s service, something which has become more popular in recent years.

 News Viewing

Social media has ravaged traditional news viewing habits in Iran. The lead cause of this radical shift comes from another social media application called Telegram Messenger, which is Iran’s most popular application with some 40 million downloads.

However, there are sections of the people too who use Instagram for their news viewing, even if it is only tailored to images unlike Telegram which is text and images. According to the NazarBazaar results, some 47% of women 39% of men used the application for viewing news.