The National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), in cooperation with the Ministry of Information, is implementing a public opinion poll on the (Omanis' use of social media applications), which will last till 21st December 2023.

This survey is being implemented to set a national framework for dealing with social media and to achieve several objectives, including identifying the rates of individuals' use of social media, their rates of interaction with social media, and measuring the extent of users' satisfaction with the various social media platforms, and their preferences.

The survey sample includes about (2,500) male and female citizens aged 18 years old and above across the governorates.

The poll is carried out by telephone during official working hours, through the phone number (24219000) of the NCSI's call center.

The outputs of the previous poll on Omanis' use of social media platforms, which was carried out by the National Centre for Statistics and Information in March 2019, showed that, 94% of Omanis have accounts on social media. "WhatsApp" was the most widespread social media application, which was used by 93% of social networking users, followed by "YouTube" with a rate of 71%, then "Instagram" with a rate of 50%.

 The results also showed that the average daily use of social media was 6 hours a day, while the most common time for using social media is the period between eight o'clock evening to twelve o'clock noon time, meanwhile, 36% of Omanis trust social media as a source of news and information about important events, compared to 35% who do not trust it.

The results of the previous survey also revealed that the Omani citizen who uses social media has an average of 3 accounts on various social networking platforms, while communicating with family and friends came at the top of the reasons for using social networking, followed by acquainting with the latest news.

 It is worth noting that, all individual data will be considered confidential and will only be used for statistical purposes, which is a right guaranteed by the Statistics and Information Law, promulgated by Royal Decree No. (55/2019).