IAB Spain this month published the 17th edition of its annual social media study, the Estudio de Redes Sociales 2026, revealing a Spanish market in an unusual state: near-universal adoption paired with accelerating platform abandonment, a booming appetite for short-form video commerce, and deep public distrust of AI-generated content. The study was produced in collaboration with Elogia and sponsored by Be a Lion. Field research was conducted in April 2026 across a sample of 1,002 internet users aged 12 to 75, with an additional 108 digital industry professionals surveyed separately.

The headline figures confirm that social media has become structural infrastructure in Spanish daily life. According to IAB Spain, 86% of internet users between 12 and 75 years old - approximately 33.1 million individuals - used at least one social platform during the study period. That figure has been stable since 2017, oscillating between 85% and 87%, suggesting the market has reached saturation rather than continued growth. The total Spanish population in this age bracket stands at 40.1 million, according to INE 2025 data cited in the study.

What has changed is the breadth of engagement. The average user now actively visits 7.2 social networks, up sharply from 5.3 platforms recorded in 2025. That jump - almost two additional platforms per person in one year - is one of the more striking data points in the report, suggesting that new platforms are winning incremental time rather than displacing existing ones. Yet the average daily time spent remains steady at one hour, unchanged from the prior year. More platforms, same total attention. The arithmetic has direct implications for marketers: reach is fragmented, but the pool of time available for advertising has not expanded.

WhatsApp dominates, but Instagram is closing the gap on preference

WhatsApp retains its position as the most penetrated social platform in Spain, with 94% monthly reach and a 97% daily usage rate among its users. According to IAB Spain, the platform holds a 99% aided brand awareness score and is the first preference of 33% of users - down 4 percentage points from 37% in 2025, its first meaningful dip in years.

Instagram has moved aggressively into the space WhatsApp has vacated at the preference level. Its preference share climbed 5 percentage points to 21%, putting it solidly in second position. Monthly penetration sits at 77%, with 72% of Instagram users visiting daily or multiple times per day. The average Instagram session runs 1 hour and 16 minutes among its users, up from 1 hour and 2 minutes in 2025 - a 14-minute increase that reflects the platform's deepening hold on engaged users.

YouTube reinforces its position as the default video platform, reaching 73% monthly penetration, up 5 percentage points year on year. Daily usage frequency is lower than WhatsApp or Instagram at 44%, but session length among active users averages 1 hour and 15 minutes, reflecting its role as a longer-form consumption environment rather than a habitual check-in surface.

TikTok continues its upward trajectory. Monthly penetration reached 41% - an increase of 6 percentage points versus 2025 - placing it in sixth position overall by monthly reach but fourth by user preference. The platform's stronghold remains pronounced among younger cohorts: 61% penetration among Gen Z (18-30 years) and 68% among Gen Alpha (12-17 years). Among Gen Alpha users, TikTok generates an average of 1 hour and 42 minutes of daily usage, the longest per-platform session time of any demographic group in the study. The broader TikTok Shop infrastructure build-out has been reshaping how the platform positions itself as a commercial channel across markets.

Facebook, meanwhile, maintains broad reach at 56% monthly penetration but shows a demographic skew toward older users: Gen X accounts for 37% of its monthly base and Boomers for 25%. Average daily session time is 47 minutes, below the platform average, and IAB Spain characterises Facebook as a reach asset rather than an attention one - high frequency of visits, but low session retention.

Spotify is the study's notable riser. The platform climbed to 43% monthly penetration, up 7 percentage points, and moved into fifth position by preference. Its average session length of 1 hour and 23 minutes is second only to WhatsApp among all measured platforms. IAB Spain attributes Spotify's rise to deepening mobile audio habits rather than social functionality, though the platform's classification as a social network within the study reflects its participatory features.

X loses ground at scale while Discord enters for the first time

X (formerly Twitter) posted the largest year-on-year decline of any established platform in the study. Monthly penetration fell 7 percentage points to 26%, and the platform dropped out of top-six preference rankings entirely. According to IAB Spain, 11% of users who abandoned a social platform in the past 12 months identified X as the one they left - the highest abandonment figure of any platform in the study. Political content was cited by 21% of abandoners as a reason for leaving platforms generally.

Total platform abandonment has risen sharply. The share of users who stopped visiting or deleted their account from at least one social network climbed from 33% in 2025 to 42% in this edition. Facebook is the second most abandoned platform at 10%, followed by Telegram at 9% and LinkedIn at 7%. The reasons are predominantly passive rather than ideological: 40% of those who abandoned a platform said they simply did not use it, and 32% said they did not like it.

Discord appears in the IAB Spain study for the first time this year, registering 9% monthly penetration. Its average user is 31 years old - the youngest average age of any platform in the study - and 63% male. Discord generates 52 minutes of daily usage among its users, putting it in sixth position by session intensity among measured platforms. The platform's positioning around gaming and community use cases gives it a distinct profile from the other new entrants tracked.

Social commerce: search behaviour up, direct buying still limited

The study dedicates significant attention to social commerce, where the data reveals a market that is firmly established at the discovery and consideration stages but still nascent at the point of purchase. According to IAB Spain, 54% of social media users said they search for information on social platforms before making an online purchase, up 6 percentage points from the prior year. Instagram is the leading pre-purchase research destination at 45%, followed by YouTube at 35% - though YouTube fell 10 percentage points from 2025 on this measure. TikTok rose 6 percentage points to 28%, its most significant gain in the commerce search dimension.

Social media influences purchase decisions for 44% of users, a figure that has held stable versus 2025. The breakdown by generation is telling. Among Gen Z, 56% report that social media influences their buying choices, compared with 30% among Boomers. Women are more influenced than men: 48% versus 39%.

Actual in-platform purchasing remains a minority behaviour. Only 25% of users said they had completed a purchase inside a social platform - but that figure has increased 9 percentage points in one year, the fastest single-year rise the category has recorded. TikTok is the primary driver of that growth. Among users who have bought directly in a social platform, 39% did so through TikTok - an extraordinary 25-percentage-point increase that IAB Spain explicitly attributes to the launch of TikTok Shop in Spain. Instagram fell 6 percentage points to 32%, Facebook dropped 12 percentage points to 24%. Spain's digital advertising market reached 6.21 billion euros in 2025, and social networks accounted for more than 1,800 million euros of that total - close to 30% of all digital investment - according to IAB Spain's companion advertising investment study, also produced with PwC. Social advertising grew 13.2% year on year in 2025. Instagram concentrates almost half of that commercial investment according to the professionals surveyed, while LinkedIn consolidates as the second commercial platform, and WhatsApp and TikTok are rated highest in satisfaction by marketing practitioners.

AI content: 87% demand labelling, but trust is limited across all categories

Artificial intelligence emerges as a major theme in this year's study, with IAB Spain finding that 87% of users consider it essential to label content generated by AI. That near-consensus spans all age groups and genders, making it one of the most uniform findings in the entire dataset. Despite this demand, the study also finds that most users struggle to identify AI-generated content themselves, particularly older demographics.

Trust in AI-generated content is low across the board. According to IAB Spain, users' confidence does not reach positive territory even in the categories where AI content is perceived as least threatening - such as entertainment. In areas like news, health, and politics, distrust is substantially more pronounced. The study notes that a clear majority positions itself between neutrality and outright rejection, suggesting that AI has not yet built a credibility foundation in the social content environment.

This dynamic matters for advertisers. The demand for labelling - and the associated trust deficit - creates both a compliance pressure and a strategic consideration for brands using AI-generated creative on social platforms. Research by Raptive published in July 2025 found that when readers believed content was AI-generated, trust dropped sharply regardless of whether the content was actually machine-produced - a finding that complicates the use of AI tools for social content production in contexts where authenticity is commercially valuable.

IAB Spain's January 2026 digital roadmap already flagged AI agents as a central force reshaping Spanish digital advertising operations, identifying transparency and measurement as the key areas where industry standards remain immature. The social media study's data now adds the consumer dimension: users want labels, they distrust AI content, and they cannot reliably identify it - a combination that creates governance risk for platforms and advertisers operating without clear disclosure standards.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha: the data behind the generational gap

The study includes a detailed generational breakdown that is worth examining for its precision. Gen Z - defined as 18 to 30 years old, born 1995 to 2007 - uses an average of 6.1 platforms per month, the highest of any generation. They spend 1 hour and 23 minutes per day on social media on average, also the highest across all groups. 70% follow influencers, 45% follow brands, and 56% say social media influences their purchase decisions. Within this generation, 35% have completed an in-platform purchase, more than any other age cohort. IAB Spain characterises Gen Z as "social buyers" - the generation where the link between content consumption, influencer exposure, and purchase conversion is strongest.

Gen Alpha (12 to 17 years old) presents a different profile. Their platform average is lower at 4.4 per month, but 80% follow influencers - the highest rate in the study. Their preferred platforms by monthly use are WhatsApp, YouTube, and Instagram in that order, but their preferred platform by personal choice is TikTok, which generates 1 hour and 42 minutes of average daily use within this group, the highest per-platform engagement reading in the entire dataset. 71% of Gen Alpha users are rated as "very loyal" - they abandon platforms less than any other group except Boomers.

Boomers (61 to 75 years) show 78% social media penetration, the lowest of all generations but still a substantial majority. WhatsApp is their dominant platform, and Facebook retains meaningful relevance with this cohort in a way it no longer does for younger users. Boomers average 54 minutes daily, spend 1 hour and 20 minutes specifically on WhatsApp, and are classified as "distant" in terms of influencer and brand following.

What professionals are doing differently in 2026

The study includes a separate survey of 108 digital industry professionals, providing a practitioner perspective alongside the consumer data. The findings point to a strategic shift away from direct response toward branding objectives. According to IAB Spain, 72% of professionals said improving positioning is the primary goal of their organisation's social media activity, and 65% cited increasing awareness. Only 38% listed selling as an objective - significantly lower than both the branding metrics, suggesting that social media is being repositioned internally as a brand-building environment rather than a conversion channel.

Activations participativas - participatory or interactive content formats - generate the highest interaction and web traffic of any content type used, despite being published less frequently than brand-positioning content. News and brand updates are the second-highest driver of both interaction and traffic at 26% each.

One in four professionals said they already integrate influencer marketing strategies into their campaigns, concentrated on Instagram and TikTok, where short-form video dominates distribution. IAB Spain's Gen Z marketing study published in November 2025 found that Spanish fashion brands hold 65% of the top positions in brand rankings among 14 to 30 year olds, with authenticity and aesthetic appeal as primary drivers - a finding that connects directly to the professionals' survey data showing Instagram concentrating the largest share of commercial investment.

The knowledge-to-commercial-use gap identified in the professionals' survey is striking. TikTok is known by 81% of marketing professionals but used commercially by only 19%. YouTube is known by 82% but used commercially by 27%. WhatsApp is known by 79% but used commercially by just 18%. LinkedIn presents the inverse pattern: known by 79% and used commercially by 44% - the highest commercial conversion ratio of any platform in the study. This gap suggests substantial untapped commercial potential on consumer-facing platforms, particularly TikTok and WhatsApp, among organisations that have not yet built operational capability to use them commercially at scale.

The professionals' data also shows that long-form durable content continues to dominate over ephemeral formats in strategic preference, while streaming formats remain underused relative to their engagement potential. ChatGPT and Gemini are the AI tools most adopted among marketing professionals for content ideation, though the consumer data showing distrust of AI content creates a tension for practitioners using these tools at scale.

The CTV context provides additional framing. IAB Spain's 2026 connected television study, presented on May 6, 2026,found that 95% of Spanish internet users consume content through connected television - a parallel saturation to the social media penetration data. Both markets have hit structural ceilings on reach, shifting the competitive question from audience acquisition to attention quality and conversion.

Timeline

Summary

Who: IAB Spain, in collaboration with research firm Elogia and sponsored by Be a Lion, surveyed 1,002 Spanish internet users aged 12 to 75 and 108 digital industry professionals in April 2026.

What: The 17th annual Estudio de Redes Sociales finds that 33.1 million Spaniards use social media, that the average user now visits 7.2 platforms monthly (up from 5.3 in 2025), that TikTok Shop drove in-platform purchasing up 25 percentage points, that 42% of users abandoned at least one platform in the past year, and that 87% demand mandatory labelling of AI-generated content.

When: Field research was conducted in April 2026. The study was presented on May 19, 2026.

Where: Spain. The study covers internet users aged 12 to 75 across all Spanish regions, using an online panel methodology (CAWI - Computer Assisted Web Interviewing).

Why: The study matters for the marketing community because it quantifies how rapidly social commerce is shifting from discovery to conversion (25pp TikTok Shop surge), how the attention economy inside social media is fragmenting further across more platforms without expanding in total time, and how the AI content trust deficit poses both compliance and creative risks for brands operating at scale in Spanish social channels. For advertisers and media buyers, the gap between platform knowledge and commercial activation - especially on TikTok and WhatsApp - represents an unresolved strategic question that the study puts in numerical form for the first time.