How much time do people spend on social media? As of 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usageCurrently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events friends. Global impact of social mediaSocial media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased a polarization in politics and heightened everyday distractions.

Today the average time spent on social media is 2 hours and 24 minutes today for people aged 16 to 64.

How many people use social media?

              Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2024, over five billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to over six billion in 2028.

              Who uses social media?
              Social networking is one of the most popular digital activities worldwide and it is no surprise that social networking penetration across all regions is constantly increasing. As of January 2023, the global social media usage rate stood at 59 percent. This figure is anticipated to grow as lesser developed digital markets catch up with other regions
              when it comes to infrastructure development and the availability of cheap mobile devices. In fact, most of social media’s global growth is driven by the increasing usage of mobile devices. Mobile-first market Eastern Asia topped the global ranking of mobile social networking penetration, followed by established digital powerhouses such as the Americas and Northern Europe.

              How much time do people spend on social media?
              Social media is an integral part of daily internet usage. On average, internet users spend 151 minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, an increase of 40 minutes since 2015. On average, internet users in Latin America had the highest average time spent per day on social media.

              What are the most popular social media platforms?
              Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social network worldwide. In June 2023, the top social media apps in the Apple App Store included mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Telegram Messenger, as well as the ever-popular app version of Facebook.

Context: This dataset offers insights into the usage patterns of social media apps for 1,000 users across seven popular platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It tracks various metrics such as daily time spent on the app, number of posts made, likes received, and new followers gained.

Dataset Features:

User_ID: Unique identifier for each user. App: The social media platform being used. Daily_Minutes_Spent: Total time a user spends on the app each day, ranging from 5 to 500 minutes. Posts_Per_Day: Number of posts a user creates per day, ranging from 0 to 20. Likes_Per_Day: Total number of likes a user receives on their posts each day, ranging from 0 to 200. Follows_Per_Day: The number of new followers a user gains daily, ranging from 0 to 50. Context & Use Cases: This dataset could be particularly useful for social media analysts, digital marketers, or researchers interested in understanding user engagement trends across different platforms. It provides insights into how much time users spend, how actively they post, and the level of engagement they receive (in terms of likes and followers).

Conclusion & Outcome: Analyzing this dataset could yield several outcomes:

Engagement Patterns: Identifying which platforms have higher engagement in terms of time spent or likes received. Active Users: Determining which users are the most active across various platforms based on the number of posts and followers gained. User Retention: Studying the correlation between time spent and follower growth, providing insight into user retention strategies for different platforms. Overall, the dataset allows for exploration of social media usage trends and helps drive decision-making for marketing strategies, content creation, and platform engagement.

As of the third quarter of 2024, the average daily time spent using the internet on mobile phones among people in Malaysia was around **** hours and ** minutes. By comparison, people spent around *** hours and ** minutes on social media every day. These numbers signified the importance of being present on the internet among Malaysians. Internet accessibility in Malaysia Presumably for convenience reasons, almost every internet user in Malaysia preferred accessing the internet on their smartphone. The upward trend of population coverage of 4G LTE mobile network in the country since 2016 may have contributed to this preference. Besides, Malaysia is one of the countries with the highest rates of mobile internet penetration in Asia. Main activities on the internet Malaysia has shown significant improvement in its internet infrastructure in recent years, which has allowed the internet users in the country to be more active online. The internet usage in Malaysia has mostly revolved around personal purposes, such as participating in social networks. As of January 2024, Malaysia recorded around ** million active social media users. A 2020 survey revealed that every internet user in Malaysia had about 9.6 social media accounts on average.

Facebook is fast approaching 3 billion monthly active users. That’s about 36% of the world’s entire population that log in and use Facebook at least once a month.

In 2024, children in the United Kingdom spent an average of *** minutes per day on TikTok. This was followed by Instagram, as children in the UK reported using the app for an average of ** minutes daily. Children in the UK aged between four and 18 years also used Facebook for ** minutes a day on average in the measured period. Mobile ownership and usage among UK children In 2021, around ** percent of kids aged between eight and 11 years in the UK owned a smartphone, while children aged between five and seven having access to their own device were approximately ** percent. Mobile phones were also the second most popular devices used to access the web by children aged between eight and 11 years, as tablet computers were still the most popular option for users aged between three and 11 years. Children were not immune to the popularity acquired by short video format content in 2020 and 2021, spending an average of ** minutes per day engaging with TikTok, as well as over ** minutes on the YouTube app in 2021. Children data protection In 2021, ** percent of U.S. parents and ** percent of UK parents reported being slightly concerned with their children’s device usage habits. While the share of parents reporting to be very or extremely concerned was considerably smaller, children are considered among the most vulnerable digital audiences and need additional attention when it comes to data and privacy protection. According to a study conducted during the first quarter of 2022, ** percent of children’s apps hosted in the Google Play Store and ** percent of apps hosted in the Apple App Store transmitted users’ locations to advertisers. Additionally, ** percent of kids’ apps were found to collect persistent identifiers, such as users’ IP addresses, which could potentially lead to Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) violations in the United States. In the United Kingdom, companies have to take into account several obligations when considering online environments for children, including an age-appropriate design and avoiding sharing children’s data.

The average person has 8-9 social media accounts. This has doubled since 2013, when the average person just had 4-5 accounts.

The results might surprise you when looking at internet users that are active on social media in each country.

Context

This dataset explores the relationship between digital behavior and mental well-being among 100,000 individuals. It records how much time people spend on screens, use of social media (including TikTok), and how these habits may influence their sleep, stress, and mood levels.

It includes six numerical features, all clean and ready for analysis, making it ideal for machine learning tasks like regression or classification. The data enables researchers and analysts to investigate how modern digital lifestyles may impact mental health indicators in measurable ways.

Dataset Applications

• Quantify how screen‑time, TikTok use, or multi‑platform engagement statistically relate to stress, sleep loss, and mood.
• Train regression or classification models that forecast stress level or mood score from real‑time digital‑usage metrics.
• Feed user‑specific data into recommender systems that suggest screen‑time caps or bedtime routines to improve mental health.
• Provide evidence for guidelines on youth screen‑time limits and platform moderation based on observed stress‑sleep trade‑offs.
• Serve as a teaching dataset for EDA, feature engineering, and model evaluation in data‑science or psychology curricula.
• Evaluate app interventions (e.g., screen‑time nudges) by comparing predicted versus actual post‑intervention stress or mood shifts.
• Cluster individuals into digital‑behavior personas (e.g., “heavy late‑night scrollers”) to tailor mental‑health resources.
• Generate synthetic time‑series scenarios (what‑if reductions in TikTok hours) to estimate downstream impacts on sleep and stress.
• Use engineered features (ratio of TikTok hours to total screen‑time, etc.) in broader wellbeing models that include diet or exercise data.
• Assess whether mental‑health prediction models remain accurate and unbiased across different screen‑time or platform‑use segments. # Column Descriptions
• screen_time_hours – Daily total screen usage in hours across all devices.
• social_media_platforms_used – Number of different social media platforms used per day.
• hours_on_TikTok – Time spent on TikTok daily, in hours.
• sleep_hours – Average number of sleep hours per night.
• stress_level – Stress intensity reported on a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high).
• mood_score – Self-rated mood on a scale from 2 (poor) to 10 (excell # Inspiration This dataset was inspired by growing concerns about how screen time and social media affect mental health. It enables analysis of the links between digital habits, stress, sleep, and mood—encouraging data-driven solutions for healthier online behavior and emotional well-being. # Ethically Mined Data: This dataset has been ethically mined and synthetically generated without collecting any personally identifiable information. All values are artificial but statistically realistic, allowing safe use in academic, research, and public health projects while fully respecting user privacy and data ethics.

In February 2024, adults in the United States aged between 18 and 24, spent 186 minutes per day engaging with social media platforms. In comparison, respondents aged 65 and older dedicated approximately 102 minutes of their day to social media. TikTok was the most engaging social media platform for U.S. consumers aged between 18 and 24 years. The popular video was also the most engaging among users aged 35 and 54 years, commanding between 45 and 50 minutes of users' daily attention. Respondents aged between 55 and 65, reported to spending between 45 minutes daily on Facebook.

56.8% of the world’s total population is active on social media.

Teenagers are the 2nd largest group of people affected by social media addiction. Teens ages 13 to 18 years old spend a significant amount of their free time on social media with an average of 3 hours a day.

Facebook and YouTube are still the most used social media platforms today.

In this post, I'll give you all the social media addiction statistics you need to be aware of to moderate your social media use.

90% of people aged 18-29 use social media in some form. 15% of people aged 23-38 admit that they are addicted to social media.

For this project, data from 24-hour time diaries probing several indicators of social capital and life quality were gathered to update prior time series on how Americans spend time. Data were collected to be consistent with time-diary collections prepared in 1965, 1975, and 1985 (see ICPSR 7254, 7580, and 9875) to allow cross-time comparisons. The survey was conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Maryland between March 1998 and December 1999 (effectively covering each season of the year and each day of the week) with a representative sample of 1,151 respondents aged 18 and older. Using established time-diary procedures with Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), respondents were asked to complete "yesterday" time diaries detailing their primary activities from midnight to midnight of the previous day, their secondary activities (e.g., activities that occurred simultaneously with the primary activities), and when, with whom, and where they engaged in the activities. The project focus included the following substantive and methodological areas: (1) time spent in social interaction, particularly parental time with children, (2) measurement problems in time estimates, (3) activity and social interaction patterns of elderly Americans, and (4) time spent on the Internet and effects on social isolation and other media usage. In addition to the estimates of time use obtained from the time diaries, the project elicited information on (1) marital and parental status, education and employment status of the respondent and spouse (if married), age, race/ethnicity, and family income, (2) weekly and previous-day recall estimates of time spent on paid employment, housework, religious activities, and television viewing, (3) feelings of time pressure, and (4) use of the Internet, e-mail, and home computers.

The purpose of "The Time Budget Survey 1980-81" is to gather a comprehensive overview over how the population spends its time on different activities. The Time Budget Surveys are our most important source of information about how much and what types of unpaid work are performed in society, who performs this work, and when it is performed. The Time Budget Surveys also contain data not found in other surveys, e.g., information about circadian rhythms, leisure activities, and time people spend with their children and the rest of the family. The Time Budget Survey was first carried out in Norway in 1972-1973 and was originally inspired by the international survey "Comparative Time-Budget Projecet", where the same survey program was used in 12 different countries (A. Szalai (red.): The Use of Time, 1965-66). The 1980-81 survey is the second of its kind in Norway and is carried with a view to secure comparability with the results from the international survey. The data is mainly collected by diaries kept by a selection of the population. In addition, participants are asked to answer questions in a face-to-face interview. The survey consists of questions about the time use in then following areas: 1. Work 2. Work-related travels 3. Private work; hereunder housework, maintenance, childcare, purchasing and travels 4. Personal needs 5. Education 6. Leisure; hereunder sports and outdoor activities, entertainment, social interaction, media og reading This dataset contains the data for the interviews. The diaries are documented in a separate file.

The global number of Facebook users was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2027 by in total 391 million users (+14.36 percent). After the fourth consecutive increasing year, the Facebook user base is estimated to reach 3.1 billion users and therefore a new peak in 2027. Notably, the number of Facebook users was continuously increasing over the past years. User figures, shown here regarding the platform Facebook, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).

Facebook received 73,390 user data requests from federal agencies and courts in the United States during the second half of 2023. The social network produced some user data in 88.84 percent of requests from U.S. federal authorities. The United States accounts for the largest share of Facebook user data requests worldwide.