Brunei continues to have the highest Instagram penetration in the world, with 63% of the population above 13-years-old using the photo and video sharing platform.
According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital 2019 report, the number of Brunei residents using Instagram has increased by 14% to 220,000 users in the past year.
This is the second consecutive year Brunei has had the highest Instagram penetration globally since the report began including Instagram data from more than 230 countries in 2018.
Iceland came second with 61% penetration, while the only other ASEAN country in the top 20 was Malaysia who came in 13th with 49% penetration. The highest number of Instagram users was in the US with 120 million users.
Brunei’s internet and mobile usage were also correspondingly high, with 93% of the population having internet access and 83% connecting to the internet through their phones.
The Sultanate is significantly behind in internet connection speeds however, with both fixed and mobile internet clocking in around 15 MBPS – below the worldwide average of 54 MBPS for fixed internet and 25 MBPS for mobile internet.
Brunei’s annual improvement in internet speed is also behind the worldwide average. Between 2018 to 2019, internet speeds in Brunei increased by 8.2% and 13% on fixed-line and mobile respectively, while the global average was a 33% and 18% increase respectively.
Meanwhile, Brunei’s overall social media penetration was at 94% – the third highest globally and the highest in ASEAN – while Qatar and U.A.E tied for first with 99%. This is largely driven by the 350,000 Facebook users in the Sultanate, which is the third highest penetration for Facebook globally.
Also popular amongst Bruneians are Twitter and LinkedIn which had 84,900 and 72,000 users respectively. Twitter showed a decrease of 4.6%, while LinkedIn grew by 5.9%. Males make up the majority of Bruneian social media users on Facebook (57%), Twitter (64%), and LinkedIn (60%) with the exception of Instagram, whose user base is 55% female.
The Digital 2019 noted that more than one million new people are being connected to the internet each day. 4.39 billion people are accessing the internet in 2019 – 3.48 billion who have social media accounts – spending an average of six hours and 42 minutes online every day.
