No, there aren’t more female users on Facebook than women in the world

A recent Facebook post suggests that you might be getting duped online if you’re befriended by a woman on the social media platform. 

"World’s female population: 3.52 billion," the June 9 post says. "Female on Facebook: 5.77 billion. Security alert. So next time you get a request from Sonia..beware..it could be Srinivasan."

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Facebook didn’t respond to our questions about the post. 

According to data and projections from the Population Division of the United Nations, there are an estimated 3.94 billion females in the world and about 4 billion males.  

That’s more than the Facebook post says, but the claim in the post has also been circulating online for several years, since at least 2018.

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But according to the 2022 first quarter report for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, Facebook had only 2.94 billion monthly active users as of March 31 — about half the number of users the post claims identify as female, and a billion fewer females than there are in the entire world, according to the United Nations.   

According to a March 24 post from Hootsuite, users who identify themselves as female make up 43.4% of Facebook users that could be reached via advertising on the social media platform. 

We rate this post False.