The most hated social media platform in South Africa

Like many across the world, South African social media users despise Reddit.

A new global study from Mailsuite analysed the Google Play Store reviews of nearly 1,500 communication and social media apps to rank social media in every country at the end of June 2024.

In South Africa, Facebook was named the most-loved social media platform.

This doesn’t necessarily align with the rest of the world, where Facebook was named the most hated social media platform in 39 countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada and India.

That said, South Africans did share their hatred for Reditt with 30 other countries in the study.

“The content-sharing site (Reddit) was a straggler to the app realm, undergoing a major renovation to become usable on mobile browsers in 2010 and finally buying up third-party Reddit reader Alien Blue in 2014 and rebranding it as the official Reddit mobile app,” said Mailsuite.

“Reddit updated the app’s conversation navigation and loading times in April 2024, following widespread criticism that the app was slow and unintuitive to use.”

Globally, TikTok was the most loved social media app, with 30 countries, including the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, naming it their favourite.

Launched in September 2017, TikTok quickly became one of the most influential social media apps in recent years, with over 1 billion downloads on Playstore and over 80 million reviews (Playstore and Appstore combined).

Mailsuite’s findings are similar to those of the latest Social Media Landscape Report by World Wide Worx and Ornico.

The report used interviews with 24,000 respondents who are aged 15+ and live in urban areas with 8,000 or more inhabitants.

According to the report, Facebook is still the most popular site in South Africa, with usage increasing from 56.7% in 2022 to 59.6% in 2023.

TikTok came in second place, with usage rising from 30.6% in 2022 to 34.0% in 2024.

“This growth reflects TikTok’s increasing popularity, likely due to its engaging short-form video content that continues to attract a wide audience,” said the report.

Instagram stayed on the podium but saw a slight client in usage, dropping from 27.6% in 2022 to 26.9% in 2023.

“This suggests that while Instagram remains a key player in the social media landscape, its growth may be plateauing as it faces competition from other platforms.”

Elon Musk’s Twitter/X declined usage from 22.5% in 2022 to 18.8% in 2023.

“This drop could be attributed to various factors, including changes in user preferences and possibly
the impact of new features or policies on the platform.

Fifth-placed LinkedIn also dropped from 14.7% in 2022 to 12.2% in 2023, possibly indicating a shift in how professional networking sites are used.

Following the top five were Telegram (10%), Pinterest (10%), 2GO (10%), Tinder (6%) and Grindr (5%)

Reddit only had 4% usage, indicating that it is not a popular website amongst South African social media users.

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