Instagram has surpassed Naver and YouTube to become Korea’s second most frequently used app.
According to a survey conducted by Wiseapp Retail Goods, a retail and app analysis service, Instagram ranked second among Koreans’ most frequently used apps in the first quarter of this year.
Instagram had approximately 14.9 billion monthly uses in the first quarter, ranking second after KakaoTalk (72.7 billion uses).
The increase in Instagram’s usage over the past year was 35.9% (3.9 billion uses).
In the first quarter of last year, Instagram was fourth with 10.9 billion users, after KakaoTalk, Naver, and YouTube. However, it surged to third place with 13.7 billion uses in the fourth quarter of last year, surpassing YouTube (13.6 billion uses), and in the first quarter of this year, it even surpassed Naver (14.1 billion uses).
Instagram is also closely chasing Naver in terms of usage time.
In the first quarter, Instagram ranked fourth among the apps used the longest by Koreans, following YouTube (1,057 billion minutes), KakaoTalk (323 billion minutes), and Naver (206 billion minutes).
Instagram’s usage time in the first quarter was 201 billion minutes, and the gap with Naver in the first quarter of last year was 88.5 billion minutes, but it narrowed to 480 million minutes in a year.
The usage time has surged by an average of 550 million minutes per month over the past year, while Naver’s has decreased by 150 million minutes.
Instagram’s growth is attributed to the younger generation, mainly Millenials and Gen Z (born in the early 1980s to early 2000s), who frequently use and stay on the app for a long time.
A WiseApp representative explained, “Although Instagram has a shorter history of app launch than local apps, it has proliferated since the short-form video service Reels launch in February 2021, mainly among young users.”
They added, “Not only is the growth in the number of uses fast, but the stay time is also long, so the number of Instagram users is expected to continue to increase.”
