MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/. Telegram is experiencing the largest increase in audience among social networks and messengers in Russia over the past six months. The share of daily users there has grown by 13%, according to the results of a survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center published on Monday.
"Instagram (banned in the Russian Federation; owned by Meta Corporation, which is recognized as extremist in Russia) dropped from the fourth to the eighth spot, yielding to Telegram. If the share of Instagram users has halved over the period under review (from 53% to 25%), then Telegram shows the largest increase in audience among all social networks and messengers (13-percentage-point increase in September 2021)," the poll says.
The percentage of Telegram's daily users has also changed significantly, jumping from 22% to 35%. Meanwhile, for Instagram, that figure decreased from 33% to 9%.
Viber and TikTok are used by 37% (a five percentage point drop in September 2021) and 35% of Russians, respectively. Facebook (banned in the Russian Federation; owned by Meta Corporation, which is recognized as extremist in Russia) and Twitter also lost their audience: the former saw outflow at 10%, while for the latter that figure came to 4%.
"The top five most popular social networks and messengers among Russians today include WhatsApp (87%), YouTube (75%), VKontakte (62%), Telegram (55%) and Odnoklassniki (42%)," the center’s experts found out. With that in mind, Odnoklassniki has risen from the 7th to the 5th spot over past six months, while VKontakte‘s daily audience has grown by 5 percentage points in six months.
On March 21, the Moscow’s Tverskoy Court satisfied the Prosecutor General Office of Russia’s request and found the activity of Instagram and Facebook, social networks owned by the US-based tech conglomerate Meta, to be extremist and banned their operation in Russia. Despite that, citizens and organizations will not be charged for extremism for using Facebook or Instagram.
About the survey
The Russia-wide VCIOM-Sputnik survey was conducted on April 10, 2022. The sample size was 1,600 respondents aged 18 and over, and the maximum error margin with a 95% probability does not exceed 2.5%.