According to reports, Instagram’s monthly active users have climbed to 2 billion, which is a message disclosed to CNBC by anonymous employees. The veteran company has not yet – and may not – officially disclosed these figures because it has been under scrutiny for possible harm to children and young people in the past few months.
The last time Instagram publicly announced the size of its user base dates back to 2018 when the platform revealed that it had 1 billion users. This means that it took the company three years to reach the 2 billion mark. The employees who disclosed the news to CNBC said they discovered this number during internal conversations – an employee reportedly told CNBC that Instagram had exceeded this threshold a week or so before Facebook decided to change its name to Meta.
Instagram has been desperately trying to get ahead of TikTok, this fast-growing short video app just broke through 1 billion users in September-only three years after the app merged with Musical.ly and became widely used. Although Instagram has surpassed the platform, it is unclear how long this situation will last. Instagram has been launching one after another that looks like a copy of TikTok, and its newly released Reels Visual Reply is the latest example.
Despite this, Instagram is not really in a position to brag about its user base, because its own internal research has found that the platform may exacerbate the body image problem of young girls, and it has also been accused of making it easier for teenagers to find drugs. In response to these problems, the platform introduced a “take a break” function, prompting users to close the application after a period of use and announcing the introduction of new parental controls.