Social Media
Based on data from Digital 2026: Kyrgyzstan, Instagram is the most popular social network in the country. The estimated potential advertising reach of Instagram is 3.9 million users, which corresponds to 53.3% of the population of Kyrgyzstan. This means that more than half of the country's residents use this platform, considering the audience over 13 years old (registration for younger users is prohibited). In this context, the number of Facebook users in Kyrgyzstan is significantly lower – only 938 thousand (approximately 12.8% of the population). Instagram surpasses Facebook in reach by more than four times, confirming its popularity among Kyrgyzstanis.Thus, the structure of social media in Kyrgyzstan demonstrates the dominance of Instagram, moderate representation of new or specialized platforms (such as Threads and LinkedIn), as well as a decline in interest in the already established Facebook and Twitter. The total number of social media users reached 3.90 million, which constitutes 53.3% of the entire population (or 78.7% among people over 18 years old). In 2025, the total number of social media accounts increased by 950 thousand (+32.2%), indicating a steady growth of new users, primarily on Instagram.
TikTok: Blocked, but with great potential
In the report, Kepios specifically mentions that data on TikTok is absent due to its official blocking in Kyrgyzstan. In 2024, access to this platform was restricted by a decision of the authorities, which deprived ByteDance of the opportunity to present audience statistics. Despite this, many users continue to use TikTok via VPN, but their activity is not accounted for in the official data.If TikTok had not been blocked, it could have taken one of the leading positions in reaching the Kyrgyz audience. For example, in neighboring Kazakhstan, TikTok has about 16.9 million users (over 18 years old) and reaches more than 86% of all internet users, ranking first in terms of visits.
- “Weather” is the most frequent query. Users regularly search for weather forecasts, often using various variations such as “weather tomorrow” or “weather Bishkek,” indicating that the internet has become the primary source of weather reports.
- “Download” – the word “download” frequently appears in search queries, likely in conjunction with file names, programs, or media. Kyrgyzstanis actively search for ways to download content from the internet.
- “Translator” – another very popular query. Online translators, such as Google Translate, are in demand for translating between languages. The word “translation” also appears in the top queries, indicating interest in text translation services and possibly currency exchange.
- “YouTube” – many users enter the name of the video platform YouTube in Google search, using it as navigation. The query YouTube consistently appears in the top searches, confirming its popularity (more details in the next section).
- “WhatsApp” – the messenger WhatsApp is also one of the most frequent queries: the word “ватсап” (local spelling of WhatsApp) is among the top phrases. There is also a query “ватсап веб” – many are searching for the web version of WhatsApp for use on a computer.
- “Anime” – unexpectedly, the word “аниме” also made it into the top 10, indicating Kyrgyzstanis' interest in Japanese animation. Users are searching for anime videos or information about this genre.
Messengers: Familiar to All, but Not Reflected in Statistics
Messaging services are actively used in Kyrgyzstan – almost every internet user communicates through one messenger or another. However, there is an interesting point in the Digital 2026 report: there are almost no messengers listed in the advertising reach, except for Facebook Messenger. This is due to the fact that the most popular messengers WhatsApp and Telegram do not provide open data about their audience (WhatsApp does not show ads at all, and Telegram has only recently started doing so, and the data remains limited). Therefore, Kepios only accounts for Messenger, which has an audience of about 159 thousand people. This figure is significantly lower than that of social networks and does not reflect the real picture of messenger usage.In practice, WhatsApp is installed on most smartphones in Kyrgyzstan, and its monthly audience numbers in the millions. Telegram is also quite popular, especially among youth, media, businesses, and government structures (for distributing news and announcements). The popularity of these messengers is indirectly confirmed by the fact that queries related to WhatsApp are among the top ten most frequent in Google. However, traditional methods make it difficult to measure their reach due to the lack of open statistics and advertising dashboards.
