Social Media in The Netherlands (SMS 2)

The partnership ‘Social Media Savvy – Part 2’ reports that social media use increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. In line with the growth of the past few years, more Dutch people have again started using social media. 13.7 million Dutch people aged 15 and older are active on social media, in 2020 this was 13.5 million and the year before 13.3 million. On May 25th 2021 the Social Media Savvy 2 Partnership had their 5th Zoom meeting: The idea is that we will keep you up to date about the social media use in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Italy and help young people to appear professional on social media, to increase the chance of the getting the job they deserve. SMS2 also supports youth workers, trainers and teachers on social media guidance.

Dutch Social Media Users

The traditional top 5 remains the same. A total of 13.7 million Dutch people are active on one or more social media. If you count WhatsApp as part of the social media – and that is a big if, because WhatsApp lacks public character – that platform is still by far the largest. Facebook also ranks above 10 million Dutch users, and YouTube completes the top 3. The high position of Instagram is no longer a surprise, and LinkedIn is tapping the 5 million Dutch users for the first time, completing the top 5. The entire sequence has been relatively stable for years.

TikTok Pinterest

TikTok, Pinterest and LinkedIn are growing faster than previous years. Facebook is losing popularity among young people in the age category 15 to 19 years, daily Facebook use decreases significantly! Quite a difference with other channels where use has increased everywhere. Almost all social media platforms grew in the past year, with Snapchat and especially YouTube as notable exceptions, which show a slight decline. The explosive growth of TikTok is of course the first to notice. The relative newcomer now has over 1 million more Dutch users than a year ago – an even greater increase than last year’s 700,000. Pinterest and especially LinkedIn are also growing faster in user numbers than in recent years.

SMS – Part 2

The partnership Social Media Savvy Part 2 consists of 3 partner organisations of three countries:

• Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work (The Netherlands)
• ARES (Italy)
• Werkcenter Scotland (United Kingdom)

The partner organisations will be further introduced on the Social Media Savvy website.

SMS2 Zoom May 25th 2021

On Tuesday May 25th we had our 5th SMS2 Zoom meeting. Each partner organisation is almost finished with its country report. A part of the Dutch country Report is the introduction of this article.

• Netherlands Country Report is almost finished
• Italy Country Report in progress,
• UK Country Report in progress

During the Zoom meeting we discuessed it would be interesting to have more focus on certain sectors, because social media is more important in those sectors… The SMS platform is coming soon. The platform will have a social media newsfeed, generated from accredited sources (like the post, LA Times, Telegraaf, Huffington Post, etc.). As regards to security we will make sure a SSL certificate is implemented (this is also already implemented on the SMS2 website). We will also check where the WORD Press servers are in relation to GDPR (to check if it’s not in America). When the news feed is ready we will try to attract young people to our website and platform. This could be done by using key words (what words people search on google: e.g. social media advice,  Social media savvy): So we have to put relatable content on the platform through a lot of articles and blogs. We will first attract the young people to the website: and then set it up, to forward them to the platform, with ‘read privileges to students and youth workers/teachers…’ (but this could change when implemeneted).