Research: Signal grew considerably, hardly any stoppers at WhatsApp

This article was last updated on July 18, 2025

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Research: Signal grew considerably, hardly any stoppers at WhatsApp

The number of people in the Netherlands used the ChatApp Signal has more than doubled to 1.8 million users in the first half of this year. This is stated in the interim update of the annual national social media study of Newcom.

Due to rapid growth, Signal ended up at number 10 of the most popular social platforms in the Netherlands. At number 1, with 13.7 million users is still whatsapp. That app received around 200,000 new users in the same period.

In some circles, users made a call in recent months to remove WhatsApp and to switch To Signal. Although a group switched,, according to Newcom, 98 percent of the Signal users are also on WhatsApp. This shows how dominant this app is in our society.

No farewell

Only 1 percent of Signal users have canceled WhatsApp, and 1 percent say that they never have used WhatsApp. Few Dutch people have removed WhatsApp from their phone in the past six months: 0.5 percent, around 90,000 users. At Signal, that number is many times greater: around 330,000 people have already said goodbye to the app.

“Really canceling this, saying goodbye to WhatsApp, people hardly do that,” says Newcom director Neil van der Veer. “Many signal users do not yet add the deed to the word. It is really in the experimental phase.” That does not mean that it does not live in certain circles. Signal is the most popular among theoretically educated people between 45 and 60 years old.

Research into social media use

Newcom did an interim measurement of the annual social media study, under a representative panel of more than 1500 people older than 15 years.

The research agency has included all the platforms. However, a number have been highlighted due to current developments: WhatsApp, Signal, Bluesky, Truth Social and X.

Platform X sees the number of Dutch users decreasing steadily since 2024. Last six months, around 400,000 people left. In total, around 2.3 million Dutch users can still be found on the platform.

The three main reasons that respondents mention not to be active on X anymore: they find a different platform more fun, feel no longer at home or think that too many fake news is going around on X.

Part consciously chooses

X-alternative bluesky And Truth Social, the platform of US President Trump, have relatively few users in the Netherlands. Bluesky has 350,000 and Truth Social 190,000.

According to Newcom director Van der Veer, the growth of Signal and the loss of X show that some of the users consciously choose social media based on trust and content. “But the majority is less concerned with these themes. They make full use of commercial platforms such as WhatsApp.”