Foreign social media platforms expand presence in Korea

[Image source: Pixabay]

Foreign big tech companies are actively penetrating South Korea’s information technology (IT) platform market. Applications such as YouTube are taking up a bigger portion of Korean users’ time and their influence is growing.

According to mobile index data compiled by IGAWorks after being commissioned by Maeil Business Newspaper on Thursday, YouTube ranked first in the overall app usage time on smartphones for the second week of August 2024.

YouTube’s total usage time was 456.91 million hours from August 12th to 18th, a gap that is nearly four times larger than KakaoTalk’s 116.54 million, which was in second place., YouTube’s usage time increased by about 3.82 million hours compared to the first week of the month, while KakaoTalk saw its usage time decrease by about 3.34 million hours. The usage time for Naver app, which was in third place, decreased from 83.2 million hours to 80.98 million hours during the same period.

YouTube has maintained the top spot in monthly active users (MAU) counts since December 2023. It had an MAU of 45.8 million as of July 2024, surpassing KakaoTalk’s 45 million and Naver’s 43 million. Google Chrome and the Google portal app also placed in the top five, indicating Google’s growing presence.

Korean teenagers are also spending more time on foreign platforms, with an analysis of usage times for smartphone users under 19 revealing that foreign apps such as YouTube, Instagram, and Google Chrome dominated the top three spots in total usage time.

Foreign apps’ popularity among teenagers is even more pronounced when the scope is narrowed to social networking services and messaging apps. Instagram saw a total usage time of 22.8 million hours during the second week of August 2024, more than double that of KakaoTalk which was in third place.

Anyone aged 14 and above can create an Instagram account, whereas there are no such age restrictions to sign up with KakaoTalk.

X (formerly Twitter) also surpassed KakaoTalk to have the second-highest usage time in August 2023, an indication that teenagers are increasingly favoring foreign social media platforms that emphasize short texts, images, and videos, over KakaoTalk.

Foreign platforms allegedly use strategies such as short-form videos to lock in young users, but industry sources are concerned that teenagers’ increasing usage of foreign apps could expose them to overly explicit social media content. The firms themselves also face challenges in managing harmful content for youth, as reviews are conducted by overseas headquarters.