In January 2017, Malta had the highest penetration rate of monthly active social media users with 79 percent. In that same year Moldova reached a penetration rate of only 20 percent. The share of monthly active mobile social media users was also highest on Malta. However, Iceland had the same penetration rate, of 69 percent in January 2017. The country with the highest number of monthly active mobile social media users was Russia, with 38.5 million users.
In 2016, 38 percent of individuals in the EU-28 used social networks daily. The country with the highest share of daily social media use was Denmark, where 59 percent of the population participated every day or almost every day.
Social networks are used for a variety of purposes. Ten percent of individuals in the EU-28 had a profile on professional social networks such as LinkedIn and Xing. The share of consumers who interacted with their banks at least once a week on social media amounted to an average of 36 percent in Europe. Among those who access the news in a digital format, social media was the second most used service to keep up with current events. Additionally, almost half of the time the news are read on social media and news aggregator sites, without users following the link back to the original article.
