Social Media Usage Growth

The number of social media users worldwide has grown 61% from 2016-2020, while average time spent per user per day has grown only 13%, as shown in these bar charts with growth lines and data rows. Growth rate for number of users and time spent has decreased over the past few years. Year over year change in number of users was 20.9% in 2017 and 7.2% in 2020. For time spent per user, the year over year change decreased from 5.3% to 0.4% over the same time period. Social media usage data from Digital 2021: Global Overview Report.

Social Media Users and Time Spent in Simple Bar Charts with Growth Lines and Data Rows

Why Use Bar Charts with Growth Lines and Data Rows

The bar charts provide an easy way to visualize growth over time in key measures, in this example social media users and time spent. The growth lines quantify the overall percentage growth. The message from the data rows is that the change rate is decreasing over time.

How I Made These Social Media Bar Charts

Here is the data I used to create the charts is below:

Here's how I made the left chart:

create a 1/2 page chart in PowerPoint
enter the tablet shipments data from Digital 2021: Global Overview Report into the Mekko Graphics Data Editor
show YoY change as data row, formatted as percentage
select YoY change label and uncheck Auto Wrap to show label on one line
enter y axis title and hide other elements of y and x axes
adjust internal chart margins and bar gaps
format bar totals with B as suffix
add growth line
update series colors

Copy the chart and paste it into the same slide. Update the data, y axis title, bar total suffix, and series color.