Digital 2024 Highlights: The Trends and Behaviours of Singaporeans Online

How do Singaporeans live online? Creative agency We Are Social released its Digital 2024 report last month, diving deep into the trends defining social networks and the internet the world over.

It also investigated the local digital and social landscape of Singapore, analysing the behaviours of Singaporeans on various social media platforms and other trends in digital media, advertising, and gaming. Here are the highlights of the Singapore digital report.

Social Animals

About 5.13 million Singaporeans make up the city-state's social media user identities aged 16-64, comprising 85% of the nation's population. Based on this figure, Singapore ranks 10th globally for social media adoption; users also spend an average of two hours and 14 minutes a day on social media. Meanwhile, male social media users comprised 52.8% of total social media user identities in Singapore, whereas women made up 47.2%.

What application or website do Singaporeans use the most? The digital report shows that 97.5% of Singaporean social media user identities mainly use chat and messaging apps or websites, followed by social networking platforms (95.8%).

About 43.4% of users utilise apps or websites to stay connected with their loved ones, as well as to fill in their time (35.5%) and keep updated on the news (32.6%).

WhatsApp Is King

WhatsApp — not X, Instagram, nor Facebook —reigns supreme among Singaporeans. The instant messaging platform is the most favoured and most used platform (27.2% and 74.7% respectively) in Singapore, as reported by social media user identities. This was followed by Facebook (16.7% and 72.7%), TikTok (14.2% and 52.5%), Instagram (13.1% and 60.3%), and Telegram (5.2% and 47.8%).

Favourites to Follow

Singaporeans mostly follow family, friends, and other people they know, with 43.5% of social media users reporting this as the social media account types they mainly follow.

However, while actors, comedians, and performers were usually followed in other markets, the report shows that Singaporeans' favourite accounts to follow are that of restaurants, chefs, and food personalities. It's safe to say that Singapore is a nation of foodies!

Digital Advertising and Media

The report also investigated digital advertising spending in Singapore. In 2023 alone, the nation's digital ad spend grew by 10.5% to S$2.34 billion, comprising 59.7% of total ad spend.

Social media and influencer advertising also grew their share, with social media ad spending comprising 24.5% share of total digital ad spend – an increase of 11.8% in 2023 or S$573.5 million.

Meanwhile, the annual spend on online influencer activities was at S$93.15 million, with an increase of 15.4% or S$12 million in the year-on-year change in spending.

Digital media spending in Singapore has a lot of opportunity for growth, as the report shows that consumers in the nation spent S$1.45 billion on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year, with an increase of 9.1% year-on-year. Media subscriptions and downloads in 2023 were largely made of e-publishing and video games, up by 14.3% and 3.1%, respectively, year-on-year change. Video-on-demand, on the other hand, had the highest growth (16.6%).

Gaming Galore

There was a decline in most types of media regarding the amount of time users spent each day on different kinds of media and devices. These included social media use, reading online and physical print news, internet use, radio, podcasts, and streaming.

The report, however, shows that gaming consoles went against this trend. Singaporeans spend about an hour and two minutes of each day playing gaming consoles with a 20.9% growth in daily time spent on consoles year-on-year — or an increase of 10 minutes.

Curious to learn more about the digital and social media trends in Singapore and the world over this 2024? Visit We Are Social's website!