The number of Facebook users in Bangladesh decreased by 21 per cent or 1.24 crore in the last six months to hit 4.65 crore in January this year from 5.89 crore in July last year.

The information was shared by social media management and analytics platform NapoleonCat, which provides data and insights on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

However, Meta, the parent of Facebook, did not publish the total number of Facebook users in Bangladesh.

Moreover, Meta did not reply to The Daily Star's request to share data on users in Bangladesh.

According to NapoleonCat, the number of users of Instagram and Messenger, the other two services of Meta, have also decreased consistently in the last six months in Bangladesh.

The number of Instagram users in Bangladesh dropped by 670,000 during this period.

And the number of Messenger users has decreased by over 1 crore.

The number of users of LinkedIn was 18 lakh in January, down from 50 lakh in December last year, according to NapoleonCat.

The majority of Facebook users of Bangladesh—67.9 per cent—is men and the largest user group—2 crore—consists of people aged between 18 to 24 years in the country, according to the platform.

Bangladesh has been among the top three nations contributing to the active user growth for Facebook as of December 31 last 2022, according to Meta.

"Users in India, the Philippines, and Bangladesh represented the top three sources of growth in DAUs (daily active users) during December 2022, relative to the same period in 2021," reports Indian news channel NDTV early this month citing a regulatory filing of Meta.

According to global data firm Statista, there are nearly 44.7 million Facebook users in Bangladesh as of January 2022, making it the 10th largest country in terms of Facebook audience size.