Facebook has 3,065,000,000 monthly active users (MAUs) as of January 2025 and over 65% of those users are daily active users (DAUs). At the beginning of April 2025, worldwide social media users numbered 5.31 billion which is almost two-thirds of the world’s population.1
The most popular social influencer on social media at the start of 2025 is footballer (soccer) Cristiano Ronaldo with over 1 billion followers across the platforms he uses. He reportedly is paid $3.23 million per sponsored Instagram post.
Twenty-three percent of social media users have admitted spreading fake news to other users without indicating the source. A Pew Research report in 2017 by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie began, “In late 2016, Oxford Dictionaries selected ‘post-truth’ as the word of the year, defining it as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’”2
Early in 2025, Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads et al., announced that it was altering its policy of taking responsibility for “fake news” on its media streams and rather than blocking would be encouraging the use of Community Notes regarding potentially misleading or confusing posts (this policy is U.S. with other nations having varying limitations).
In two separate reports from 2024, Pew Research Center published that 54% of U.S. adults say they sometimes get at least some of their news content from social media with 21% indicating they regularly get news from social media news influencers.3
Not to diminish his value as a human being or take away his right to express an opinion, the world’s current most popular influencer, the one who more people follow than any other figure, left junior high school at age 14 to pursue his footballer career; actually, he didn’t “leave” school but was expelled for throwing a chair at a teacher. While he is arguably the greatest current footballer and certainly the highest scorer, most popular and best paid, there is nothing that qualifies him as an influencer other than popularity. Having turned 40 in 2025, his sponsorship by Nike probably speaks of his use of their gear, his Altice Europe (internet and cellular connectivity) could link to his use of their products, Herbalife as his nutrition sponsor, DAZN which broadcasts matches including his, Clear shampoo… Abbott… Unilever… yes, he does use products but does that mean that users of the products will have the same results as him?
There has come a point in civilization where Reality is not measured by what is True but rather by what is popular, what is acceptable to the greatest number of people, what is touted by those with higher status than the commoner. I’m thinking of one of my favorite actors who I’ve watched in multiple television roles for 45 years who has been quite successful and yet is a spokesperson for a reverse mortgage product. I hope he has managed his finances better than to have experience with the product but his believe-ability as a character gives him credibility for something with no obvious connection to who he really is. I also thoroughly enjoyed James Garner growing up with Maverick, Rockford and more but his commercial endorsements for a particular brand of instant camera with another popular actress were entertainment that sold millions of dollars worth of product simply because of the credibility of characters previously played.
How readily are we influenced by the presentation? I had an old coffee friend who regularly reminded us that life was in the presentation. He was talking typically about how individuals presented themselves in their public persona and especially in the business world but ‘presentation’ has become a higher priority than reality. Is it acceptable to take anything as real or true simply because it is popular or accepted by the majority? History is full of examples of popular movements that ended poorly. Let’s not join that parade.
1 https://datareportal.com/social-media-users
2 https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/10/19/the-future-of-truth-and-misinformation-online
3 https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/11/18/americas-news-influencers/
