53% of Iranians Are a Member of at Least One Social Media Platform

According to Iran’s head of Digital Media Development Center, 53% of Iranians are a member of at least one social media platform. “The average daily presence of Iranians on the internet is between 5 to 9 hours, while the global monthly average is 16 hours,” claimed this Iranian official.

Fars News reported that during a conference on “Investment and Business Opportunities in ICT” in Tehran, Seyed Morteza Mousavian, Iran’s head of Digital Media Development Center, stated that there are currently 43 million Internet users in Iran. This Iranian official also added that the Internet penetration in the country has reached to 80% and that there are 40 million smartphones in Iran.

“53% of Iranians and 72% of the young adults between the age of 18 to 29 are a member of a social media platform,” said Mousavian. “On a daily average, Iranians spend between 5 to 9 hours on the Internet, while the global monthly average is 16 hours and it’s expected to reach to 120 hours on a monthly average by 2020,” this Iranian official added.

Iran’s head of Digital Media Development Center also mentioned that there are 20 million video gamers in Iran and that they spend 14.6 billion hours playing video games on an annual average. Although with copyright infringements, Iran’s video game market showed an approximate $140 million revenue in 2015, according to an article published on VentureBeat.

“Currently the most visited websites in Iran are hosted inside the country and the websites that are hosted in the United States are in the second place,” said Mousavian. He also stated that according to the rankings, the most popular websites amongst Iranians in the order of category are, “News, advertising, software and gaming, social media platforms and educational content”.

This Iranian official also mentioned the popularity of services from Google, such as Google Maps and Youtube even though the service is blocked in Iran. Google Maps received positive feedback from Iranians when last year the company launched its traffic feature for users inside Iran.

“Most of the members on LinkedIn in the region are Iranians,” said Mousavian while emphasizing on the presence of Iranians on business-oriented social networking platforms. The heavy use of social media networks by Iranians has caused the government to think about building local social media platforms and setting guidelines for foreign networks.