Radiography of social networks in the Arab world: between the boom and the blockade.

Either in the UAE or in other countries, two thirds of those 16.6 million users are between 18 and 35 years old. Interestingly, Instagram does not have as much penetration: 7.1 million at the beginning of 2018; of them, 2.1 million active users are in Saudi Arabia

The Arab countries use social networks and instant messaging applications more and more; even WhatsApp has to do with the success of Telegram or Viber in some nations. At the same time that penetration percentages and active users increase, users have to face some prohibitions of their governments, which are wary of free (but above all encrypted) communications of these chats.

Saudi Arabia takes the cake on Twitter and Instagram, while Egypt, spurred by the Arab revolutions, crowns as the country with the largest number of users on Facebook. In addition, some Internet users have to deal with the occasional blockage of social networks, while the differences in penetration are felt between men and women and between those countries with serious political problems or with prosperous economies.

Facebook is the star of the Arab world according to reports such as the Arab Social Media Report (ASMR) analyze the penetration of social media in 22 Arab countries, which encompass 400 million inhabitants, and publish periodic statistics. In the last, this year, the presence of social networks among young people stands out (64% of users are under 30) and that only one in three users are women, although in the Persian Gulf the proportion It is one for every four men.

Facebook is the social network that takes the palm in the whole region: 156 million users at the beginning of 2018, when on the same date in 2017 it was 115. The countries of the Persian Gulf are those that have seen a greater penetration: in Qatar and United Arab Emirates, 95% of social network users have an account in Mark Zuckerberg's network. They are followed by Bahrain, with 75%.

Even so, 23% of Arab users (34.5 million) are alone in Egypt: the Arab revolutions of 2011 helped to make their use popular. This country, Algeria and Saudi Arabia account for half of all Facebook users in the region. The success in Algeria is due, as the ASMR explains, to the increased competition in the country's telecommunications market and to the increase in the penetration of the Internet itself in 2016 and 2017.

Syria is the only country in the region where there are fewer users on social networks than a year ago seen the last two years, from 2016 to 2017, penetration rates in social networks have increased a lot. In the case of Facebook, penetration at the beginning of 2018 was 39% in the region, when a year before it was 28%. Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Libya grew more than 20 points each. These growth trends do not coincide with the situation in Syria, Yemen or Palestine, where the political conjuncture and conflicts reduce the percentages. In Syria, active users have fallen because of the war and the massive flight of its inhabitants; It is the only country in the region where there are fewer users than a year ago. In addition, there are only 10% penetration rates in Comoros, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

Bahrain and Kuwait, betting on Twitter. The data is very different when talking about Twitter, which does not have the same popularity. The ASMR estimates that at the beginning of the year there were 10.8 million active users and the figure would reach 11.1 million total users in March, 5.8 more than three years ago. If Egypt was the winner in terms of Facebook users, the first position of the blue bird is given to Saudi Arabia: 29% of active users (1.7 million) are there.

Each month, these 22 countries produce 849.1 million tweets, 59% more than two years ago. Half of them come from two countries: the champion Saudi Arabia (33%) and Egypt (20%). When they write, they do it in both English and Arabic.

The countries of the Persian Gulf have one of the highest penetration rates of social networks in the Arab world (Pixabay). Once again, Algeria saw an increase in active users in the last two years (some 774,000 new ones), although Bahrain and Kuwait are the countries with the highest penetration. In fact, the latter are the most active Twitter users, with 4.2 tweets per day (the region's average is 2.6), while Mauritania has the least Twitter users: 1.8 posts per day . Unfortunately, according to the ASMR, the percentage of women tweeters in the region has fallen from 36.6% in 2014 to 32.4% in 2016.

LinkedIn, Instagram and the Persian Gulf. Internet users in these countries also seek work and professional contacts through social networks: 16.6 million people were LinkedIn users in January 2017, 22% more than a year earlier. United Arab Emirates has the highest penetration rate: one in three people in the country (the total population is 9.27 million) has an account. According to the study, the country's status as "primary labor market and economic center" explains so many users.