Misc
The World’s Top 50 Influencers Across Social Media Platforms

Introducing our new index, which ranks U.S. generations on their economic, political, and cultural influence.

Visualizing the World’s Top 50 Influencers
In the modern digital world, social media reach is power.
The people with the most followers on Twitter, for example, have a massive platform to spread their messages, while those with large, engaged followings on Instagram are an advertiserโs dream sponsor partner.
Social media can also be an equalizer of power. It’s true that many celebrities boast large followings across platforms, but social media has also enabled previously unknown personalities to turn YouTube or TikTok fame into veritable star power and influence.
Who has the biggest reach across the entire social media universe? Instead of looking at who has the most followers on Instagram, Twitter, or other networks, we ranked the most-followed personalities across all major platforms combined.
Who Has the Most Overall Followers on Social Media?
We parsed through hundreds of the most-followed accounts on multiple platforms to narrow down the top influencers across social media as of April 2021.
Sources include trackers of the most followers on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, verified directly on site and with social media tracker Socialblade.
The results? A top 50 list of social media influencers consisting of athletes, musicians, politicians, and other personalities.
Rank | Name | Category | Total Followers | Biggest Platform |
---|---|---|---|---|
#1 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Sports | 517M | |
#2 | Justin Bieber | Music | 455M | |
#3 | Ariana Grande | Music | 429M | |
#4 | Selena Gomez | Music | 425M | |
#5 | Taylor Swift | Music | 361M | |
#6 | Dwayne Johnson | Film & TV | 342M | |
#7 | Katy Perry | Music | 338M | |
#8 | Kylie Jenner | Other | 333M | |
#9 | Rihanna | Music | 332M | |
#10 | Kim Kardashian | Other | 319M | |
#11 | Lionel Messi | Sports | 298M | |
#12 | Neymar | Sports | 283M | |
#13 | Shakira | Music | 282M | |
#14 | Jennifer Lopez | Music | 277M | |
#15 | Beyoncรฉ | Music | 267M | |
#16 | Ellen DeGeneres | Film & TV | 260M | |
#17 | Miley Cyrus | Music | 235M | |
#18 | Nicki Minaj | Music | 232M | |
#19 | Barack Obama | Politics | 221M | |
#20 | Will Smith | Film & TV | 217M | |
#21 | Kendall Jenner | Other | 212M | |
#22 | Demi Lovato | Music | 211M | |
#23 | Lady Gaga | Music | 210M | |
#24 | Kevin Hart | Film & TV | 201M | |
#25 | Virat Kohli | Sports | 195M | |
#26 | Eminem | Music | 194M | |
#27 | Drake | Music | 192M | |
#28 | Khloรฉ Kardashian | Other | 191M | |
#29 | Bruno Mars | Music | 191M | |
#30 | Chris Brown | Music | 187M | |
#31 | Vin Diesel | Film & TV | 177M | |
#32 | Narendra Modi | Politics | 175M | |
#33 | Justin Timberlake | Music | 175M | |
#34 | Billie Eilish | Music | 171M | |
#35 | Charli D'Amelio | Other | 169M | TikTok |
#36 | Kourtney Kardashian | Other | 165M | |
#37 | Cardi B | Music | 160M | |
#38 | LeBron James | Sports | 157M | |
#39 | Adele | Music | 156M | |
#40 | Priyanka Chopra | Film & TV | 144M | |
#41 | Germรกn Garmendia | Gaming | 143M | Youtube |
#42 | Wiz Khalifa | Music | 142M | |
#43 | Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg | Gaming | 141M | Youtube |
#44 | Akshay Kumar | Film & TV | 140M | |
#45 | Snoop Dogg | Music | 138M | |
#46 | Deepika Padukone | Film & TV | 138M | |
#47 | Britney Spears | Music | 137M | |
#48 | Shawn Mendes | Music | 136M | |
#49 | Whindersson Nunes Batista | Other | 135M | |
#50 | Salman Khan | Film & TV | 134M |
Unsurprisingly, celebrities reign supreme on social media. As of April 2021, soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo was the most-followed person on social media with more than 500 million total followers.
But there are other illuminating highlights, such as the global reach of music. With large and diverse fanbases, artists account for half of the top 50 largest social media followings.
Also notable is the power of Instagram, which was the biggest platform for 67% of the top 50 social media influencers. This includes hard-to-categorize celebrities like the Kardashians and Jenners, which turned reality TV and social media fame into business and media empires.
Download the Generational Power Report (.pdf)
The Most Followers on Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube
However, itโs not only celebrities that dominate social media.
Personalities that started on one social media platform and developed massive followings include TikTokโs most-followed star Charli DโAmelio and YouTubers Germรกn Garmendia, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, and Whindersson Nunes Batista.
Politicians were also prominent influencers. Former U.S. President Barack Obama has the most followers on Twitter, and Indiaโs Prime Minister Narendra Modi has more than 175 million followers across social media.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump would have also made the list with more than 140 million followers across social media before being banned from multiple platforms on January 8, 2021.
A Generational Look at Social Media Influence
While older generations have had to adapt to social media platforms, younger generations have grown up alongside them. As a measure of cultural importance, this gives Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z a rare leg-up on older generations.
Millennials, in particular, hold the lion’s share of spots in this top 50 list:
Generation | # of Influencers in Generation | Top Influencer in Generation |
---|---|---|
Gen Z | 4 | Kylie Jenner |
Millennial | 33 | Cristiano Ronaldo |
Gen X | 10 | Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson |
Baby Boomer | 3 | Ellen DeGeneres |
The average age of the top 50 influencers was just over 37.
In our Generational Power Index (GPI), which measures the share of power generations hold in various categories, digital platforms were a key area where Millennials derived their power and influence. Overall, Baby Boomersโand to a lesser extent, Gen Xโstill run the show in most areas of society today.
Social Media Influence, Going Forward
As most fans and advertisers know, not all social media accounts and followings are homogenous.
Many influencers with relatively small followings have more consistent engagement, and are often able to demand high advertising fees as a result.
Conversely, most social media platforms are reckoning with a severe glut of fake accounts or bots that inflate follower counts, impacting everything from celebrities and politicians to personalities and businesses.
Regardless, social media has become a mainstay platform (or soapbox) for todayโs cultural influencers. Billions of people turn to social media for news, engagement, recommendations, and entertainment, and new platforms are always on the rise.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of the data used for this story incorrectly counted Facebook likes instead of followers for some personalities. The content has since been corrected and updated.”
Politics
Charted: The Number of Democracies Globally
How many democracies does the world have? This visual shows the change since 1945 and the top nations becoming more (and less) democratic.

Charted: The Number of Democracies Globally
The end of World War II in 1945 was a turning point for democracies around the world.
Before this critical turning point in geopolitics, democracies made up only a small number of the world’s countries, both legally and in practice. However, over the course of the next six decades, the number of democratic nations would more than quadruple.
Interestingly, studies have found that this trend has recently reversed as of the 2010s, with democracies and non-democracies now in a deadlock.
In this visualization, Staffan Landin uses data from V-DEMโs Electoral Democratic Index (EDI) to highlight the changing face of global politics over the past two decades and the nations that contributed the most to this change.
The Methodology
V-DEM’s EDI attempts to measure democratic development in a comprehensive way, through the contributions of 3,700 experts from countries around the world.
Instead of relying on each nation’s legally recognized system of government, the EDI analyzes the level of electoral democracy in countries on a range of indicators, including:
- Free and fair elections
- Rule of law
- Alternative sources of information and association
- Freedom of expression
Countries are assigned a score on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating a higher level of democracy. Each is also categorized into four types of functional government, from liberal and electoral democracies to electoral and closed autocracies.
Which Countries Have Declined the Most?
The EDI found that numerous countries around the world saw declines in democracy over the past two decades. Here are the 10 countries that saw the steepest decline in EDI score since 2010:
Country | Democracy Index (2010) | Democracy Index (2022) | Points Lost |
---|---|---|---|
๐ญ๐บ Hungary | 0.80 | 0.46 | -34 |
๐ต๐ฑ Poland | 0.89 | 0.59 | -30 |
๐ท๐ธ Serbia | 0.61 | 0.34 | -27 |
๐น๐ท Tรผrkiye | 0.55 | 0.28 | -27 |
๐ฎ๐ณ India | 0.71 | 0.44 | -27 |
๐ฒ๐ฑ Mali | 0.51 | 0.25 | -26 |
๐น๐ญ Thailand | 0.44 | 0.20 | -24 |
๐ฆ๐ซ Afghanistan | 0.38 | 0.16 | -22 |
๐ง๐ท Brazil | 0.88 | 0.66 | -22 |
๐ง๐ฏ Benin | 0.64 | 0.42 | -22 |
Central and Eastern Europe was home to three of the countries seeing the largest declines in democracy. Hungary, Poland, and Serbia lead the table, with Hungary and Serbia in particular dropping below scores of 0.5.
Some of the world’s largest countries by population also decreased significantly, including India and Brazil. Across most of the top 10, the “freedom of expression” indicator was hit particularly hard, with notable increases in media censorship to be found in Afghanistan and Brazil.
Countries Becoming More Democratic
Here are the 10 countries that saw the largest increase in EDI score since 2010:
Country | Democracy Index (2010) | Democracy Index (2022) | Points Gained |
---|---|---|---|
๐ฆ๐ฒ Armenia | 0.34 | 0.74 | +40 |
๐ซ๐ฏ Fiji | 0.14 | 0.40 | +26 |
๐ฌ๐ฒ The Gambia | 0.25 | 0.50 | +25 |
๐ธ๐จ Seychelles | 0.45 | 0.67 | +22 |
๐ฒ๐ฌ Madagascar | 0.28 | 0.48 | +20 |
๐น๐ณ Tunisia | 0.40 | 0.56 | +16 |
๐ฑ๐ฐ Sri Lanka | 0.42 | 0.57 | +15 |
๐ฌ๐ผ Guinea-Bissau | 0.41 | 0.56 | +15 |
๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova | 0.59 | 0.74 | +15 |
๐ณ๐ต Nepal | 0.46 | 0.59 | +13 |
Armenia, Fiji, and Seychelles saw significant improvement in the autonomy of their electoral management bodies in the last 10 years. Partially as a result, both Armenia and Seychelles have seen their scores rise above 0.5.
The Gambia also saw great improvement across many election indicators, including the quality of voter registries, vote buying, and election violence. It was one of five African countries to make the top 10 most improved democracies.
With the total number of democracies and non-democracies almost tied over the past four years, it is hard to predict the political atmosphere in the future.
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