Social media in Costa Rica

With new smart devices available every couple of months, in Costa Rica it is very common that people have mobiles and tablets with internet access. Is it calculated that 74% of Costa Ricans have access to the internet. Devices are not only used for communication but also as school and work tools. 3 out of 5 persons in Costa Rica have signed up for at least one social media platform.

According to studies in 2021, Costa Ricans visit Pinterest website (40.39%) more than any other social media site but not so many open an account there. Followed by Facebook (25.82%), Twitter (15.88%), Youtube (12.85%), Tumblr (1.97%), Reddit (1.96%), Instagram (0.57%) and others (0.54%).

In general terms of tico’s accounts, Facebook is the social media platform most used in Costa Rica (3.3 million users), then Instagram with almost half of registered users but it grows its numbers everyday. Tiktok keeps on rising as more and more people want to be part of the internet trends. 

In the last 12 months, 250.000 new users have been registered in social media sites. That means an increase of 6.4%. Most of them access their accounts from mobile devices like smartphones, smartwatches and tablets.

Phone companies like Kolbi, Claro and Movistar offer attractive data plans for users and it is pretty common in the country to have prepaid plans as well. Some of the deals you can get are some of the social media apps like Facebook and Whatsapp for free (meaning those apps won’t consume your data plan). Costa Rica´s internet and data are really stable and it almost doesn’t present issues because of the telecommunications infrastructure provided by the ICE ( Costa Rican Electricity Institute). 

In Costa Rica, the most common browser used by people is Google Chrome (73.84%). Followed by Apple Safari,Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Samsung Internet. The most common search engine is Google and then Bing and Yahoo. 

Most visited sites in Costa Rica are Google, Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, local bank sites, local news sites, Wikipedia, Zoom (and other conference calls providers), Facebook, Instagram and Microsoft for Office packages.

New generations of younger people obviously have at least one social media account as digital natives, however people of all ages are in social media. The biggest demographic for Facebook are women of 35+ years old and younger men.

Let’s talk about the other ages regarding social media in Costa Rica:

• 0-4 years represents 6.6%
• 5-12 years represents 11%
• 13-17 years represents 6.9%
• 18-24 years represents 10.2%
• 25-34 years represents 16.4%
• 35-44 years represents 15.1%
• 45-54 years represents 11.9%
• 55-64 years represents 11%
• 65+ years represents 11.1% 

These demographics are important for companies that want to do online marketing and how to find their target audience. Taking on account that ticos open social media accounts every day for different platforms, the strategies of marketing that can be applied are really wide and a golden opportunity.