Instagram Hits 2 Billion Active Users Without Admitting

Instagram is reported to have reached 2 billion monthly active users without officially announcing it, according to anonymous employees who broke the news to CNBC.

The reason behind not announcing it is that the platform was under surveillance in the past few months for potentially causing harm to children and teens.

The last time the Meta-owned company publicly announced the size of its userbase was back in 2018, when the platform revealed that it had 1 billion users. It took three years for Instagram to hit the 2 billion mark.

The employees said that they found out about the number during internal conversations. In contrast, one staff member reportedly said that Instagram surpassed the threshold around a week before Facebook changed its name to Meta.

That said, Instagram has been in the wrong position recently because its internal study found that the platform can exacerbate body image issues in young girls and has also been accused of making it easier for adolescents to find drugs. Therefore, the platform rolled out a ‘pause feature,’ which prompts users to close the app if they’ve been using it for a while and announced the introduction of a new parenting system. Controls, in a step, to counteract these issues.

It is worth mentioning that Instagram is trying to stay ahead of TikTok. This fast-growing shorthand video app surpassed 1 billion users in September, just three years after the app merged with Musical.ly and became widely available.