Short and Sweet: Social Media in Pakistan

Social media is the unambiguously hot topic of our time and age. Discourse about it permeates most spheres of our lives, from holistic wellness in the personal realm to productivity in the professional one. Understandably so, since it is changing the very nature of communication, rewiring the human brain, and causing a ripple effect in cultures all over the world. We seem to be at a historic juncture.

Social media is both indicative of and has ushered in a new era in our technological and sociological development as a species, regardless of borders. Here, the situation is no different; it has taken root in the millennials of the nation and is beginning to spread its branches far and wide into the social dynamics of Pakistan.

To understand social media usage in Pakistan, it is first necessary to look at the numbers. According to the Digital Report published earlier this year by We Are Social and Hootsuite, out of the 202 million people in Pakistan, only 44.6 million have access to the internet. This means that the internet has penetrated 22% of the country. Out of this, only 18%, around 37 million people, actively use social media. Interestingly enough, social media use has grown 5.7% (an additional 2 million people) from last year, but internet use has remained largely the same.

There is a lot of potential for social media success in Pakistan, mainly because there is still a lot of room for growth. Even though internet usage has stagnated this year, it is an inevitability of sorts that more and more people will gain access to the internet in the following decades — even if that growth is slow from year to year, as indicated by the current rise of internet penetration from 15% in 2013. Millennials do make up 40-60% of the country, after all. What we can definitively say is that this stagnation does not practically diminish the potential for social media. The latter will grow regardless of the former until there is no room to grow without it.

This steady popularization of social media points toward a shift in Pakistani culture which is manifested in the everyday; people are instinctively flipping their phones out at scuffles, proposals, or any sort of event that sparks conversation and might have otherwise been obscured. And I’m sure you’ve noticed the less subtle manifestations: WhatsApp has practically become an Urdu word, Instagram influencers and models are raking in cash through e-commerce and digital marketing, Read about the decline of newspapers, TikTok is a strong (and often bizarre) trendsetting faction with users hailing from a variety of contexts/social classes and getting nationwide attention, Pakistani Twitter is a goldmine of popular content, and the meteoric rise of Pakistani Facebook groups is undeniable as well as quite fitting for a country that so values community. If all of this is any indication, social media has been embraced by Pakistan, and seems to be here to stay.