PARIS, Sept 16 — We love to hate them, but we can’t live without them. Social networks are part of the lives of millions of internet users around the world. But as some platforms rise, others fall out of favour. From TikTok to Instagram, a recent study looks at the most loved and hated social networks around the world.

The big winner is none other than TikTok. According to research carried out by Mailsuite*, by analysing Google Play Store data via SimilarWeb, the Chinese social media giant emerges as the most popular social networking application in 30 countries, including the UK, Tanzania, Canada, Vietnam and Algeria. In France and in the United States, it’s the BeReal app that people love most.

In the first quarter of 2023, ByteDance’s social network ranked as the world’s most downloaded application, according to the Datai.ai platform.

Threads and Facebook follow in second and third place among the top-rated apps, in 15 and 12 countries, respectively.

While they remain popular worldwide, Instagram and Facebook are not among the most loved platforms. While these apps are appreciated mainly in Latin America and Asia, in a total of 21 countries, the two social media sites are hated in 43 countries.

Facebook is the most hated social network in 39 countries, including Egypt, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Italy and Mexico.

As for Instagram, Jordan, Oman, Algeria and Chile place the photo platform at the top of the list of most hated social media applications.

Reddit nevertheless takes second place among the least-rated applications in 30 countries, mostly in Europe, in countries including France and Spain, as well as in North America. — ETX Studio

*Methodology: To determine the highest and lowest rated email, messaging and social networking apps in each country on the Google Play Store, a list of SimilarWeb’s top 50 communication and social networking apps was compiled for each country. The initial list included a total of 1,493 apps. The Google Play Store ratings were retrieved for all the apps on the list in each country. Then, the precise 5-star rating was calculated for each app to establish the highest and lowest ratings per category in each country. This data was collected and analysed at the end of June 2024.