A major poll conducted in Iran shows that almost 20 percent of people in the country are using social media services for business purposes.
Results of the opinion poll published on Wednesday by Nournews, a media outlet close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, showed that 14.5% of respondents from a sample of 1,570 people are gaining income from their activity in the social media websites.
The phone survey was conducted between August8-August 11 and covered above-18 people in both urban and rural regions across Iran.
The results showed that nearly half of the respondents or 48.4% of them solely use major international social media platforms including the Telegram and Instagram.
Some 27% of the respondents said they have no activity in the social media while 22.8% said they use both Iranian and foreign platforms. Only 1.8% of the people surveyed were exclusive users of the Iranian social media outlets, including Soroush Plus messenger.
Some 96.9% of the people polled say they use WhatsApp for social messaging. The figure was 81.5% for Instgram and 35.6% for the Telegram.
Iran has the largest population of internet users in the Middle East as the penetration rate for fast mobile internet services has continued to expand because of coronavirus lockdowns and closures to cover people living in remote rural regions.
The results of the new survey come as the Iranian administration and the parliament have proposed plans to encourage increased use of domestic social media platforms mainly because of the growing security risks associated with American messengers.
A long-anticipated project to expand services on a domestic internet service, known as National Information Network, has yet to be fully rolled out.