Top 16 Social Media Platforms You Should Try in 2025

Stay ahead of the curve with this snapshot of the most effective, AI-enhanced social content formats right now. Use these characteristics to determine where your prospects spend their time and try to reach them where they’re likely to engage. Your organic presence will help you build valuable relationships with your audience, while your paid ads allow you to discover new prospects and nudge current leads towards conversion. LinkedIn has been owned by Microsoft since 2015 and has become a popular place for people to showcase their work histories and publicize their achievements. Music played a key role in the platform’s success thanks to the MySpace Music feature, where artists could upload their music for greater discovery.

Perhaps the most recognizable examples of this are Snapchat’s filters, which use a device’s camera to superimpose real-time visual and/or video overlays on people’s faces (including features such as makeup, dog ears, etc.). The company has even launched filters to specifically be used on users’ cats (Ritschel 2018). Other social media players quickly joined the AR bandwagon, including Instagram’s recent adoption of AR filters (Rao 2017) and Apple’s Memoji messaging (Tillman 2018). This likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, particularly given that Facebook, one of the industry’s largest investors in AR technology, has confirmed it is working on AR glasses (Constine 2018).

Takeaways from TikTok demographics for 2025

The diversity of social media platforms reflects the wide range of human interests and needs. Whether for connecting with others, sharing creative content, building professional networks, or seeking entertainment, there’s a platform suited for every purpose. Understanding the various types of social media helps individuals and businesses choose the right tools to achieve their goals, fostering meaningful engagement in the digital world. Social media is a collection of online platforms and tools that enable people to create, share, and interact with content and connect with others across the globe. These platforms are designed to facilitate communication, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas, often in real-time. Social networks such as Friendster and MySpace emerged that allowed family members, friends, and acquaintances to connect online.

What are the dangers and drawbacks of social media?

Beyond personal use, social media plays a critical role in modern communication, marketing, education, and activism. It empowers users to build networks, raise awareness, and access information instantly. However, it also brings challenges such as privacy concerns, misinformation, and digital addiction.

• Similarly, when these bots act as “fake followers,” it can inflate the worth of influencers’ audiences (Bogost 2018).
• Encouraging interactions between health practitioners and patients on social media may benefit both patients’ well-being and patient-physician relationships 89.
• A bibliometric methodology is used to identify the current state of the academic literature, advance research.
• For this top, we looked at monthly users as the main criterion, but we also dove a bit into the main audience each platform attracts and the main features that make each channel special.

In addition, this review contributes to the literature by identifying social media uses for health purposes emerging after 2013. People with certain health concerns can receive and provide informational support content. They may also proactively request health information and advice 111 and validate health information with others 112. Social support includes informational support, emotional support, esteem support, network support, and tangible support 106. Except for tangible support, other types of social support were widely found in interactions in the online health community. However, increasing use of social media by health professionals and researchers is accompanied by concerns and challenges.

As mobile phones are held in one’s hands and wearable technology is strapped onto one’s skin, companies and brands are exploring opportunities to communicate to users through touch. While social media platforms admit that echo chambers could pose a problem, a solution is not clear (Fiegerman 2018). One reason that echo chambers present such a problem, is their proneness to fake news. Fake news are fabricated stories that try to disguise themselves as authentic content, in order to affect other social media users. Recent research has furthermore shown how the Chinese government strategically uses millions of online comments to distract the Chinese public from discussing sensitive issues and promote nationalism (King et al. 2017).

Political polarization and the normalization of fringe viewpoints, like many of the topics reviewed in this chapter, can be amorphous and hard to measure. Similar problems abound in measuring the direct health effects of social media use, as the next chapter will discuss. Some researchers have proposed that the increased access to news and information through social media leads to conversations offline and to feelings of civic involvement https://techleash.com/ (Lenzi et al., 2015). Like the Pew reports, UNICEF data offer no evidence that young people participate in superficial or ostentatious political posting (so-called clicktivism or hashtag activism) (Cho et al., 2020). On the contrary, Pew investigators found that only 7 percent of sample teens used hashtags related to political or social issues, 10 percent used social media to encourage their friends to take part in political or social causes (Anderson et al., 2022).

No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is “too intense”— it requires more direct communication, and if you aren’t used to that it may well feel scary. Social networking refers to the use of the social media apps to connect with friends or family, share content, join communities, etc. The anonymity of social media has given rise to cyberbullying and online harassment, affecting individuals, especially young users. Social media platforms are continuously working to combat such behaviour and ensure user safety. Popular social media messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Messenger, provide private and group messaging capabilities.

What are some popular social media platforms?

Viktoriya Sus is an academic writer specializing mainly in economics and business from Ukraine. She holds a Master’s degree in International Business from Lviv National University and has more than 6 years of experience writing for different clients. Viktoriya is passionate about researching the latest trends in economics and business. However, she also loves to explore different topics such as psychology, philosophy, and more. Global Brands Publications is not responsible for the content of external sites. Monetization via Quora+ revenue share reached $1 per 1000 viewed answers in tech niches.

It’s easy to view social media as “just” a channel for engagement and brand awareness, but its potential as a revenue-driving performance channel is growing. Meta’s AI, launched in the spring of this year, offers everything from content suggestions for creators to real-time answers to customer questions. It can even generate tailored replies and insights during conversations, making it a powerful tool for both customer service and community engagement. ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022 may have signaled the start of the AI revolution, but AI adoption only kicked into high gear in 2024.