Facebook Statistics in Canada

Facebook has become an integral part of Canadian social media culture, with over 29.44 million active users in the country. As an increasing number of Canadians use the platform to connect with friends, family, and businesses, it’s important to examine the latest Facebook statistics to understand how the platform is evolving in Canada.

In this article, we explore key Facebook statistics in Canada, including user demographics and the time Canadians spend on the platform. For a more comprehensive picture, you will also find key global Facebook statistics and a brief introduction to the history of the social media giant.

Facebook Statistics for Canadians

• Facebook launched on February 4, 2004.
• There are nearly 30 million Facebook users in Canada and the platform’s penetration rate is 77%.
• On average, Canadians have 190 friends on Facebook.
• Women make up over half of Canada’s Facebook users.
• Canadians aged 25-34 make up almost a quarter of all Facebook users in Canada.
• Ontario has the most Facebook users in Canada with 6.4 million active users. 
• The penetration rate for Facebook is the highest in Newfoundland and Labrador at 82%.
• Facebook advertising has the potential to reach over half of Canada’s total population.
• Facebook’s global user number is close to 3 billion.
• Globally, India has the most Facebook users, with over 400 million monthly active users.
• Over 60% of global Facebook users are under 35 years old.

Brief History of Facebook

Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his Harvard friends. Initially, it was only open for Harvard students but later expanded to students from other colleges, and by September 2004, its user count had reached one million.

The site continued to grow rapidly and by December 2005 it had six million users and several new features such as News Feed and Facebook Wall. In April 2006, Facebook was available on mobiles and in September of the same year, the platform was opened to everyone over thirteen years of age.

Once available to everyone on the internet, Facebook’s user number jumped from 20 million in April 2007 to 50 million in October 2007. Many businesses were also quick to realise the potential of Facebook and by the end of 2007, around 100,000 had created business pages on the platform.

By July 2010, over 500 million people were using Facebook. In November of the same year, it was valued at $41 billion and was the third-largest web company in the world. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, and the company was made public soon after. Later in the same year, the platform hit the one billion user mark.

In 2014, the Facebook empire expanded further when the company acquired WhatsApp, Atlas, and Oculus and in 2020, GIPHY was acquired for $400 million. In June 2021, Facebook was valued at $1 trillion. Later in the same year, on October 29, Facebook was rebranded as Meta.

Facebook in Canada

Canadians are among the most active Facebook users in the world with 29.44 million users and a penetration rate of approximately 77%. The number of Canadian Facebook users is expected to reach 35 million by 2027 according to projections by Statista. 62% of Canadians also use Facebook’s Messenger app.

How Canadians Use Facebook

Around 14 million Canadian Facebook users say they check their news feeds on Facebook at least once a day. On average, Canadians spend seven hours per month on Facebook. This average could be higher, as according to other sources, Canadians spend 15.6 hours on Facebook each month. However, daily Facebook use in Canada has dropped by 7% since 2020.

The average Canadian Facebook user has 190 Facebook friends. This is higher than the global average number of friends, which is 130. Canadian Facebook users share around 1.5 billion pieces of content per month.

Canadians are more likely to access Facebook on Thursdays and Fridays when the engagement is 18% higher than on other days. The average time Canadians spend on each Facebook visit is twenty minutes.

Facebook User Demographics in Canada

Canadian women are slightly more likely to have a Facebook account than Canadian men. In December 2022, women accounted for 54.3% of Canadian Facebook users, and men for 45.7%. In Canada, 86% of online women and 75% of online men have a Facebook account. There is little difference in the Facebook adoption rates between education and household income levels.

While Facebook is used by Canadians from all age groups, the largest age group is the 25-34-year-olds who make up 24.2% of Canadian Facebook users. The other age groups are below.

• 13-17-year-olds – 3.4%
• 18-24-year-olds – 16.3%
• 35-44-year-olds – 18.7%
• 45-54-year-olds – 14.2%
• 55-64-year-olds – 11.8%
• 65 and older – 11.4%

Geographical Statistics of Facebook in Canada

Ontario has the largest number of Facebook users in Canada with approximately 6.4 million active users in the province. Quebec has around 3.1 million, British Columbia 2.1 million, and Alberta 1.7 million active Facebook users. The three territories, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, have approximately 55,000 Facebook users in total.

The penetration rate of Facebook is the highest in Newfoundland and Labrador, where 82% of the residents use the platform. The second and third-highest penetration rates are in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia with 81% and 75% respectively. Alberta and Ontario have the lowest penetration rates at 62% and 63% respectively. There were no penetration rates included for the territories on Statista’s penetration rate data.

Advertising on Facebook in Canada

The potential reach of Facebook advertising in Canada is 63.2% of the eligible Facebook audience. That means those over thirteen years of age. The advertising reach was 54.7% of the total Canadian population at the beginning of 2022 and 56.7% of the local internet user base.

The advertising audience was 54.1% female and 45.9% male at the start of 2022. There are no other gender alternatives for audience gender data available.

Facebook Global Statistics

With 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is easily the largest social media platform in the world. In 2022, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) generated an estimated 116.6 USD in revenue. This was a slight decrease from the previous fiscal year when the company generated 117.9 billion USD in revenue. This was the first time during its nearly twenty-year history that the company’s revenue declined.

3.71 billion people in the world use at least one app owned by Meta every month. That represents 70% of all internet users. Facebook is the third most visited website in the world beaten only by Google and YouTube. In addition, the Facebook mobile app is the second most used app based on usage time. YouTube is the only app that is more popular than Facebook based on the time used on different apps. And despite being almost twenty years old, Facebook is still the third most downloaded app in the world behind Instagram and TikTok.

Facebook has approximately 1.98 billion daily active users, which means that 67% of people with a Facebook account access the platform at least once every day.

There is an over 70% with overlap with YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram. 72% of Facebook users also use YouTube and 72.3% also have WhatsApp. The biggest overlap is with Instagram with 77.4% of Facebook users also using Instagram. The overlap with TikTok is 50.2%, 49.9% with Twitter, and 33-7% with Pinterest.

Global User Demographics

Facebook has been adopted by users of all ages across the globe. However, most users, over 60% are younger than 35. Here is how the percentages of users are spread across the different age groups.

• 13-17-year-olds – 5.9%
• 18-24-year-olds – 23.8%
• 25-34-year-olds – 31.6%
• 35-44-year-olds – 16.9%
• 45-54-year-olds – 10.4%
• 55-64-year-olds – 6.4%
• 65 and older – 4.9%

As in Canada, women across the world are slightly more likely to have a Facebook account than men. Women make up 56.8% of global users and men 43.2%. Globally, people are much more likely to access Facebook on mobile only than on desktop only. 81% of global Facebook users only access the platform on their mobiles, while only 1.7% only access it on their desktops. 17.3% use both desktop and mobile to get on Facebook.

Countries With Highest User Numbers

The United States was for a long time the leading country based on Facebook user numbers. However, it has been overtaken by India, where there are 416.6 million Facebook users. The United States still holds the second spot with 240 million users and Indonesia completes the top three with 176.5 million users.

Regionally, North America has the highest penetration rate at 82.3%, followed by Latin America/ Caribbean, and Europe with 77.8% and 67,6% respectively. The lowest penetration rate is in Africa where it is just 20.83%. The worldwide penetration rate of Facebook is 39.8%.

Global Users Spend Almost Twenty Hours Per Month on Facebook

The average time people across the world spend on Facebook every month is 19.7 hours. This is at least four hours more than the highest estimated average in Canada. It is significantly higher than the 11.7 hours that users spend on Instagram. However, it is not as high as YouTube with 23.4 hours, or TikTok with 22.9 hours per month.

Time spent on Facebook accounts for 25.7% of the total time spent on social platforms. This is a decrease of almost 10% since 2019 when Facebook’s share was 35.3%. The share is predicted to decrease further to just 22.4% in 2024, with most of the lost time gained by TikTok.

Users’ Feed Content

In the final quarter of 2022, just over 50% of Facebook users’ news feeds contained posts from people they follow or from family and friends. Almost 17% of posts on the news feeds had no connection to the users. This means they were not related to the users’ friends or to the pages, groups, or people they follow.

During this period, over 1.3 billion fake accounts were removed from Facebook. In addition, 6.4 million pieces of content were actioned during this quarter because they contained bullying or harassing content.

Facebook Post Engagement Rates

On average, Facebook pages post 1.68 times in a day. Over half of the posts at 52% contain links. Photo posts represent 28.8%, video posts 17.1%, and status posts 1.8% of all posts. The average rate of engagement for Facebook posts is just 0.07%. Photo posts are most likely to have people engaging with them at 0.12%, while posts with links only get an engagement rate of 0.04%.

Over Half of Facebook Users Follow and Research Brands on the Platform

Statistics show that people are 53% more likely to buy from a company they can message on Facebook and over 1 billion users message businesses each week. However, this number includes messages sent through all platforms owned by Meta.

Having a solid presence on Facebook can be highly beneficial for companies as 54.9% of Facebook users research or follow brands on the platform. Only Instagram has a higher research rate at 62.3%. Facebook has the highest percentage of referrals from social media sites at 71.64%. This means that posting and advertising on Facebook are most likely to drive traffic to a company’s store or blog.

Conclusion

Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, with close to 3 billion users. Canada, with 77%, has one of the highest Facebook penetration rates in the world and the average Canadian spends at least seven hours on the platform every month.

While Facebook is used by people of all ages, it is most popular among people under 35 years of age. In Canada, as well as across the world, women are slightly more likely to have a Facebook account than men.

With an almost 40% global penetration rate, Facebook can be a powerful tool for brands to reach new audiences and raise brand awareness.