Meta’s Threads overtakes X in mobile usage as audience shifts | Technology News

Meta’s social networking app, Threads, is witnessing more daily activity on mobile phones than that of Elon Musk’s X—a notable shift in how people are using social platforms. New data from Similarweb shows that while Threads has steadily gained users on both its iOS and Android apps, the mobile audience for X has been gradually falling behind.
As of early January 2026, Threads recorded a daily usage of approximately 141.5 million on mobile phones. During the same period, X witnessed about 125 million daily mobile users. While X still attracts a larger audience on desktop browsers, the figures suggest that many users now prefer Threads as part of their everyday mobile routine.
This change does not seem to be a sudden reaction to recent controversies linked to X. Those incidents, which involved the misuse of an AI feature built into the platform, have attracted scrutiny from regulators in several countries and pushed some users to explore alternatives. In the short term, newer platforms like Bluesky have also benefited from this shift in interest.

Threads’ growing popularity appears to be driven Meta’s longer-term choices. The app is frequently promoted across Facebook and Instagram, making it easy for exing users to discover and try it. Meta has also put strong emphasis on creators and has regularly added new features to keep the platform fresh and engaging.
Over the past year, Threads has expanded beyond simple text posts. It now offers topic-based communities, better content controls, direct messages, longer posts, disappearing content, and early tests of interactive features like games. These changes have helped turn Threads into an app that many users check throughout the day rather than only occasionally, as per the data.
Meta has already disclosed that Threads broke 400 million monthly users in 2025 and that the number of daily active users reached 150 million the end of that year. The figures reflect steady growth and not a sudden boost.

The wider trend has been building for months, as throughout 2025, Threads continued to close the gap with X on mobile. In the United States, X still has more daily users, but that lead is no longer as large as it once was, with usage dropping significantly compared to a year earlier.Story continues below this ad
On the desktop web, however, X continues to hold a strong position. It still draws a large number of daily visits through browsers, while Threads attracts far less traffic on the web. This contrast highlights how Threads has developed mainly as a mobile-first platform, while X remains more evenly split between mobile and desktop use.
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