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The number of Facebook users in Japan amounted to approximately **** million in 2019. This figure was projected to increase to about **** million users by 2025. The total population of Japan was expected to decrease from more than *** million in 2019 to less than *** million by 2024.

The spread of Facebook in Japan

The Japanese version of Facebook launched in 2008, during the same year that Twitter entered the Japanese market. While Facebook was able to supplant domestic social networking services (SNS) such as Mixi and GREE, Twitter showed an even higher user growth in the years that followed. Social media in general became more important over the years, as the widespread adoption of smartphones made mobile communications easier than before. A further factor was the Great East Japan Earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 and disrupted phone lines in many places. The messaging app LINE was developed in a short time period as a response to the earthquake and subsequently, became Japan’s most successful messaging app. Facebook also saw a spike in user numbers during that year, which was further supported by the release of the movie The Social Network to Japanese cinemas in October 2010. Today, the most popular profiles on Facebook each have a following of several million fans.

Facebook usage

A survey from 2019 revealed that three quarters of Japanese used SNS on a daily basis. While this finding indicated a high presence of social media in peoples’ daily lives, penetration rates varied depending on the service. There also exist internal variations among the user bases. In the case of Facebook, breakdowns of the penetration rate by gender and by age group showed that the service was used equally by men and women, but much more commonly by people in their twenties and thirties than other age groups. According to a survey on the willingness to pay (WTP) for the use of SNS, Facebook users on average were willing to pay the highest amount of money among the users of major services.