SINGAPORE, 21 OCTOBER – We Are Social, the socially-led creative agency, and Meltwater, the global leader in actionable intelligence for PR, Communications and Marketing teams, have released Digital 2027, their latest annual report on social media and digital trends worldwide.
Digital 2027 reveals major milestones in artificial intelligence and social media adoption, with more than a third of the global population now using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools each month, and social media user identities climbing to nearly 70% of the world’s population. The report also highlights a significant shift in online behavior, pointing to a noticeable decline in traditional web traffic as users spend more time on social platforms, pivot to native mobile apps, and embrace AI-powered platforms.
Gen AI Adoption Accelerates
The Digital 2027 analysis estimates that active users of GenAI tools have grown to 3.4 billion – equal to 38.9% of the global population. Active GenAI users have increased by an impressive 57.2% over the past year, adding 1.2 billion new users.
ChatGPT remains the GenAI market leader, attracting double the monthly active users compared to its nearest rival. However, platforms like Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude are catching up fast, with active users of Gemini’s mobile apps increasing fourfold over the past year, and its web user base now over 60% the size of ChatGPT’s. Globally, Malaysia ranks eighth for ChatGPT usage, with 52.1% of Internet users aged 16 above using the platform in the past month, well above the global average of 34.7%.
Online Habits Shift
Digital 2027 highlights how the rise of AI and native mobile apps is reshaping the traditional internet. Across the world’s top 10,000 web domains, total monthly web traffic has declined by more than 10% since the public launch of ChatGPT, and the total web usage time has fallen by 11.2% in the past two years. However, despite AI’s impressive momentum, online adults are still 74% more likely to visit search engines when researching brands than they are to visit an AI platform. 65.7% of Malaysians use AI to search for information, compared to 60.4% globally.
However, AI isn’t the only reason web behaviors are evolving.
Digital 2027 is a comprehensive, 900-page report covering the entire online ecosystem, featuring data from GWI (formerly GlobalWebIndex), Similarweb, Statista, and more. Key highlights include:
- Varied Marketing Mix: The typical online adult relies on an average of 5.8 different channels to find new brands.
- Influential Channels: Digital ad spend increased by 8.7% over the last year, with social media up 18%, and influencer ads increasing by 15%. 67.4% of Malaysians pay for digital content monthly, compared to 69.3% globally.
- Global Internet Penetration: Internet users have reached 6.15 billion, meaning 73.9% of the global population is online.
- Ultimate Web Debate: Google search data confirms cats continue to rule the Internet at the end of 2026, fetching 4.15 billion results compared to 4.02 billion for dogs.
CEO of We Are Social APAC, Suzie Shaw, says: “AI is changing how people discover brands, but social remains central to where people spend their time and form preferences. The conversations, recommendations and opinions people share online are increasingly informing the answers AI gives and the decisions people make. For brands, that changes the game. You can optimise what you publish, but you don’t control what people say about you. For brands, that changes the game. You can optimise what you publish,but you don’t control what people say about you. GEO makes the strength of your reputation and the communities you build more important than ever. The brands that win won’t just be the ones that appear in AI-generated answers, but the ones people are genuinely interested in, talking about and recommending in the first place.”
Meltwater’s APAC Vice President of Enterprise Sales adds: “Across APAC, where digital behaviors and platform preferences vary widely between markets, brands can no longer rely on a single channel to reach their audiences. With generative AI adoption surging nearly 60% in the last year, the customer journey is being rewritten in real time, changing how people discover information and evaluate brands.”
“To keep pace, marketers and communicators must pivot from siloed channel tracking to understanding their total brand footprint across news, social, search and AI-powered environments. Because cultural context and language heavily shape how APAC audiences perceive brands, bringing together media, social and AI intelligence is now essential for teams to spot emerging shifts and focus their efforts where it actually moves the needle,” he ends.
Social Media Time and Platform Loyalty Surges
Global social media user identities now stand at 5.81 billion, equivalent to 69.9% of the global population. The global total increased by 27.% over the past year, thanks to an additional 151 million new user identities.
Crucially for brands, consumers are spending ever more time on these networks. The typical Internet user has increased their time spent on social media and online video platforms by 3.8% over the past year, reaching an average of 19 hours and 18 minutes weekly. Youtube captures the greatest share of total global social media time, closely followed by WhatsApp and Instagram. When measuring average time spent per active user, TikTok leads with one hour and 55 minutes per day.
Social networks remain a key destination of choice for commerce for younger demographics in particular: 46.9% of Internet users aged 16 to 24 use platforms like Instagram and Facebook as their primary source of information when researching brands and potential purchases. 36.9% of Malaysians discover brands through social media, highlighting the continued role of social platforms in shaping consumer discovery.
