Popularity of Social Media
According to the report Digital 2026: Kyrgyzstan, Instagram is the most popular social network in the country. The expected advertising reach of this platform is 3.9 million users, which corresponds to 53.3% of the population of Kyrgyzstan. This means that more than half of all citizens over the age of 13 actively use Instagram (considering that registration for those under 13 is prohibited). At the same time, the audience of Facebook in Kyrgyzstan is significantly smaller – about 938 thousand users, which is approximately 12.8% of the population. Thus, Instagram has more than a fourfold advantage in reach compared to Facebook, confirming its popularity among Kyrgyz citizens.Thus, social media in the country is characterized by the dominance of Instagram, a moderate level of presence of new and professional networks (such as Threads and LinkedIn), and a decline in the popularity of traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The total number of social media users reached 3.90 million, which is 53.3% of the total 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 continuing influx of new users, primarily on Instagram.
TikTok: Blocked but Has Potential
The Kepios report emphasizes that data on TikTok is not provided due to the official blocking of this platform in Kyrgyzstan. In 2024, access to TikTok was restricted as a result of government decisions, leading to a lack of data on users within the country. Although some users continue to use TikTok via VPN, their activity is not reflected in official statistics.If TikTok had not been blocked, it could have taken a leading position in reaching the Kyrgyz audience. For example, in Kazakhstan, TikTok has about 16.9 million users over the age of 18 and reaches more than 86% of internet users, ranking first in terms of visits.
- The word "weather" ranks first among search queries. Users often search for forecasts like "weather tomorrow" or "weather Bishkek," indicating that the internet has become the primary source of weather reports.
- The query "download" is also frequently encountered, likely in conjunction with file or program names, demonstrating the active search by Kyrgyz users for downloading content from the web.
- The query "translator" is popular among users. Online translators like Google Translate are actively used for translation between languages. The word "translation" also appears in the top searches, which may indicate interest in text translations and possibly currency exchange.
- The query "YouTube" is also common, as many users enter the name of the video platform in searches, using it as a navigator. This underscores the popularity of YouTube.
- The messenger WhatsApp also made it to the list of popular queries: the word "ватсап" (local spelling of WhatsApp) entered the top. Additionally, the query "ватсап веб" indicates users' interest in the web version of WhatsApp for use on PCs.
- Surprisingly, the word "anime" also made it into the top 10, indicating the growing popularity of Japanese animation among Kyrgyz citizens who are searching for anime videos or information about this genre.
Messaging Apps: Widely Used but Not Visible in Statistics
Messaging services are widely spread in Kyrgyzstan – almost every internet user communicates through one of the messengers. However, the Digital 2026 report notes an interesting point: there is almost no data on messengers, except for Facebook Messenger, in the top lists for advertising reach. This is because popular messengers like WhatsApp and Telegram do not provide open data on advertising audiences (WhatsApp does not show ads at all, and Telegram has only recently started doing so, with very limited data). Therefore, Kepios only takes into account Messenger, whose audience is about 159 thousand people, which is extremely low compared to millions of social media users and does not reflect the real picture of messenger usage.In practice, WhatsApp is installed on most smartphones in Kyrgyzstan, and its monthly audience is in the millions. Telegram is also very popular, especially among young people, media, businesses, and government institutions (for disseminating news and announcements). The popularity of these messengers is also confirmed by the fact that queries related to WhatsApp have appeared among the most frequent in Google. However, traditional methods make it difficult to measure their reach, as the lack of advertising dashboards and open statistical data does not allow for accurate figures to be presented in the report.
