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This article originally appeared on the Motley Fool.

A network effect is arguably one of the most powerful competitive advantages a business can have. While network effects can come in different forms, the concept is simple: A business benefits from a network effect when the value of its platform increases with each additional user that joins.

Social networks are great examples of businesses with network effects. But which social networks are the largest? Measured by their monthly active users, the top 10 social networks range from user counts of 313 million all the way to an impressive 1.9 billion. Here are world's top social networks, along with some interesting takeaways about this list.

(Data is culled from SEC filings and company press releases. Youtube hasn't shared any recent updates but is likely larger than Messenger today. Platforms without reliable user data or insignificant social characteristcs were excluded)

WhatsApp and Facebook messenger icons are seen on an iPhone in Manchester , Britain March 27, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble

Facebook absolutely dominates this list. Not only do the 1.9 billion monthly active users on the company's core Facebook app beat out the rest of the world's social networks by 700 million users or more, but also three of the top four social networks are all Facebook properties. Facebook's messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, have 1.2 billion and 1 billion monthly active users, respectively. And Facebook's photo- and video-sharing app Instagramat 600 millionusersmade the list as well.

In addition, Facebook's social networks continue to grow rapidly. Even the company's core Facebook app saw its monthly active users grow a nice 17 percentyear over year in the fourth quarter of 2016. This growth rate easily beatsTwitter 's 4 percentyear-over-year growth in the same period, despite the fact that Twitter's growth is on a much smaller base.

But there's another dominant company on the list. While many people in North America may be unfamiliar with its social networks, Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings owns three of these 10 social networks: WeChat and Weixin (essentially different modes of the same app), QQ, and Qzone. These social networks are the fifth, sixth, and seventh largest social networks in the world.

Notably, the fact that Facebook and Tencent together account for a whopping seven of the top eight social networks reinforces how strong of a competitive advantage social networks have. By flexing the significant reach and breadth across their platforms and integrating features across the networks under their name, Facebook and Tencent offer significant value to their users and to the businesses who make money on their networks.

One surprising social network that didn't even make the list is Snapchat, owned by parent companySnap, which just went public in March. Despite being one of the biggest IPOs in recent history, Snapchat has about 301 million monthly active users, according to estimates by Statista.

But Snapchat could make it onto this list soon. Though Snap opts to only share its daily active users with investors, this metric was up sharply in the fourth quarter of 2016, suggesting Snapchat still has some growth ahead of it. Snapchat's daily active users hit 158 millionduring this period, up 48 percentyear over year.

Can Facebook and Tencent continue to dominate the list in years to come, proving the staying power of a network effect? Or are the world's biggest social networks more susceptible to disruption than might be thought? For now, Facebook and Tencent's prevailing presence on this list suggests the biggest social networks won't be knocked from dominance easily.

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Facebook Properties Dominate Social Networking Worldwide - Newsweek

FOX31 Denver

Social networking site aims to bring home lost pets FOX31 Denver DENVER Tuesday is National Pet Day and one social networking site is working to make sure lost pets can be found quickly. Nextdoor is a network for neighborhoods and on Tuesday they will be adding a special Pet Directory to the site. Found this dude ...

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Social networking site aims to bring home lost pets - FOX31 Denver

MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. The proposals to prohibit children under the age of 14 to use social networking websites and introduce registration in social networks on the basis of one's passport information look unrealistic, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday commenting on a bill on the issue submitted to Russias State Duma (lower house of parliament).

"We have not seen the essence of this bill. We only read in the media the provisions it could possibly contain, something we are not sure about," the Kremlin said. "The provisions that are discussed in the media are, of course, unrealistic, so it is hardly necessary to have any stance on the issue," Peskov underscored.

"Member of Russias State Duma, Vitaly Milonov (the United Russia political party), earlier submitted to the lower house of the Russian parliament a bill on the legal regulation of social networks, which envisages, in particular, a ban on the use of social networking websites for children under the age of 14. Those who would like to register in social networks will also be required to provide their passport information.

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Kremlin calls ban on use of social networks for children 'unrealistic' - TASS

Alternative Press

Mastodon the band have fun trolling Mastodon the... Alternative Press With roughly only a quarter of a million words in the English language, an overlap is bound to happen. Which was the case with the band Mastodon and a new social networking site (it's like an anti-Twitter) by the same name. Read more: Mastodon's Brent ...

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Mastodon the band have fun trolling Mastodon the... - Alternative Press

Researchers have found that the more time children spend chatting online, the less happy they feel about their life overall. Photograph: Mark Mawson/Getty Images

Perhaps Facebook should carry a health warning. A study has revealed that the children who spend more time on online social networks feel less happy in almost all aspects of their lives.

The research by a team of economists at the University of Sheffield, to be presented at this weeks Royal Economic Society annual conference in Bristol, shows that the more time children spend chatting on Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram, the less happy they feel about their school work, the school they attend, their appearance, their family and their life overall. However, they do feel happier about their friendships.

Economists found that spending just one hour a day on social networks reduces the probability of a child being completely happy with his or her life overall by around 14%. They found that this was three times as high as the estimated adverse effect on wellbeing of being in a single-parent household and larger than the effect of playing truant.

The findings are likely to stoke the debate about the upsides and downsides of social media.

More than 90% of 16- to 24-year-olds use online social networks and while most sites stipulate a minimum user age of 13, few apply any checks. A BBC survey found that more than three-quarters of 10- to 12-year-olds have social media accounts. A report by the media watchdog Ofcom found that more than half of children aged as young as three and four use a tablet while one in seven has their own device.

The amount of time that children between eight and 11 and those aged 12-15 spend online has more than doubled in a decade, the Ofcom report found. Teenagers now spend nearly three and a half more hours a week online than they do watching television.

Social networking has altered childhood dramatically in the past decade and is becoming a concern for politicians and organisations responsible for safeguarding children. The NSPCC cited social media as a major cause of the dramatic increase in the numbers of children admitted to hospital after self-harming. The new research, which asked 4,000 10- to 15-year-olds to rate from one to seven how happy they were with different aspects of their lives, reveals that girls are more adversely affected than boys, as online social networking makes them feel less happy about specific areas of their life, in particular about their appearance and the school they attend. Boys were less happy with their friendships.

The research suggests that going online makes children more likely to make negative social comparisons with others.

The problem with making comparisons in online media is that people tend to portray themselves in an idealised state, said Philip Powell, one of the economists who conducted the research. There is evidence that people think other people are happier than them after interacting with them online because we tend to post videos and chat that presents this positive image.

Powell and his team split the data so that they could compare the effects of going online on children with low and high self-esteem. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they found the effects were worse for those who lacked confidence.

Powell said cyberbullying could be another explanation for links between unhappiness and childrens use of social media. Theres evidence the longer young people spend online the more likely they are to be victims of bullying, he said.

However, the economists were surprised to find nothing to support the popular theory that time spent on social networks had an adverse effect on children because it left them less time to do other, potentially more rewarding, activities.

Our findings show that social media use can be detrimental on average to young people and this is consistent with a number of findings in previous studies, Powell said. We cant say any social media is bad but we can say that the more social media children use, the higher the likelihood that they will be dissatisfied with different domains of their life and their life overall.

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Revealed: the more time that children chat on social media, the less ... - The Guardian