As of February 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 usage Currently, 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 and friends. Global impact of social media Social 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 polarization in politics, and heightened everyday distractions.

As of March 2020, social media users in the United States were staying online more. According to a survey of U.S. social media users, **** percent of respondents were using social media *** hours additional hours per day. A further **** percent used social media ** minutes to *** hour more than usual per day. Only *** percent of users were adding ******************** to their usage. Additional social media usage was a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which caused stay home orders and social distancing to be put in place in the country.

In 2020, the average daily time spent on social media by U.S. users amounted to ** minutes. This duration is set to stay stable in the upcoming years. The daily minutes in 2020 are strongly related to social distancing due to COVID-19 and thus spending more time with social platforms in order to stay connected.

Social media usage in Canada has seen a notable shift, with the average time spent on platforms decreasing to *** hour and ** minutes in early 2024, down from *** hours and **** minutes in 2023. Platform preferences and demographics Facebook Messenger remains the most popular messaging app among Canadian consumers, while YouTube has overtaken Facebook as the leading social media platform for news consumption. In 2024, ** percent of Canadians surveyed reported using YouTube weekly for news updates. Meta's social media platforms, including Facebook, are particularly popular with users aged 25 to 34, who make up the largest share of the company's audience in Canada. This age group accounts for approximately one-quarter of Facebook users in the country. Increasing social media usage Facebook currently has around **** million users in Canada, a number expected to grow to over **** million by 2029. This growth aligns with the overall trend of increasing social media adoption in the country, despite the recent decrease in average daily usage time.

A survey conducted in the Netherlands in 2022 found that the average daily time spent on social media was *** minutes, up from ** minutes in 2021, and ** minutes in 2020. Overall, social media users aged 15 to 19 years spent the most time on online platforms, totaling *** minutes per day in 2022. The largest increase in time spent on social media occurred in the ** to ** -ear age group. In 2021, this age group spent *** minutes on social media per day, increasing to *** minutes in 2022.

Between October 2020 and March 2021, users aged between 40 and 44 years were the demographic spending the largest amount of time engaging with social media apps, with an average of 59.85 minutes per day. Global users aged 19 or younger spent the least amount of time on social media apps, while users aged 50 years or older spent approximately 56.43 minutes per day on social media apps.

According to a survey from November 2020, ** percent of the surveyed social media users in the Asia Pacific region stated that they used social media for *** to *** hours a day. In comparison, ** percent of the respondents in Asia Pacific were using social media for more than *** hours daily in 2020.

How much time do people spend on social media?

              As of 2024, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 143 minutes per day, down from 151 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 three hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in
              the U.S. was just two 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.

In 2020, an average Chilean aged between 18 and 29 years spent *** hours per day on social media, slightly up from four hours a year earlier. Overall, more than four out of five people in Chile were online.

According to a survey conducted on social media usage across India in October and November 2020, the majority of respondents spent more than *** hours per week browsing through social media. About ** percent, on the other hand, spent less than *** hours in a week on social media.

According to a survey conducted in April 2020, around **** percent of respondents in Japan stated that their time spent on social networking services (SNS) increased compared to the time before the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Almost ********** of respondents stated that the time they spent on social media did not change compared to before.

A January to February 2020 survey of military consumers in the United States revealed that active-duty military members consumed more media than the general population. U.S. active-duty military members spent an average of 9 hours weekly on Instagram. In comparison, the general population spent only 6.2 hours per week on the image-sharing social platform. Additionally, U.S. military consumers spent an average of 2 hours more on Facebook per week than the general population.

In 2020, media consumers in India spent as many as *** minutes per day on average on YouTube, making it the most popular online media that year. Meanwhile, the short video format app TikTok had the least frequent consumption with users spending a little over ** minutes on the platform per day.

According to the study conducted in Peru between February and September 2020, Peruvians would spend approximately ** minutes more surfing on social networks in the so-called 'new normal' compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, when they remained in this category on average ** minutes.

According to a survey conducted on social media usage across India in October and November 2020, the majority of the respondents in relationships who did not live with their partners spent the most time on social media on a weekly basis.

In 2021, adults in the U.S. spent an average of *** minutes (eight hours and five minutes) with digital media each day. This figure marked an increase of ** minutes compared to the previous year. Traditional vs. digital media usage amid COVID-19 The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic boosted media consumption across the globe. It also rapidly accelerated the shift from traditional to digital media consumption that has been unfolding in the United States and other markets for the better part of a decade. In 2020, consumers in the U.S. spent less than *** minutes per day using analog media and entertainment formats such as television, radio, or print media. In contrast, they devoted an estimated *** minutes to digital media and entertainment channels. Even though some traditional formats saw a temporary uptick in demand in 2020, the latest forecasts distinctly show that the media usage gap will continue to widen. How do users spend their time online? There has been a great influx of digital media and entertainment formats in recent years. According to a survey carried out in the early days of the pandemic, online video streaming ranked among the most popular digital media activities in the United States. This finding still holds true in 2022, as platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, or Disney+ continue to add highly anticipated titles to their extensive content catalogs. Other popular digital media categories include online audio, social media, and gaming. Not only did online gaming traffic skyrocket in 2020, but young internet users in particular also spend more time watching gaming video content on services like Twitch nowadays.

The average daily time spent with digital media in the United States is expected to increase from *** minutes (seven hours and 19 minutes) in 2022 to close to ***** hours in 2025. Higher online media consumption in 2020 was partially attributed to the coronavirus outbreak. Impact of COVID-19 on media consumption In-home media consumption grew sharply in March 2020 in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than ** percent of U.S. respondents reported spending more time watching shows and films on streaming services, and ** percent were reading books or listening to audiobooks more than usual. Despite predictions that this spike in media usage would fall after the initial implementation of shelter-in-place orders, consumers also continued spending more time with media in the summer of 2020. The same survey, held in July that year, also asked participants about their plans to continue with their increased media consumption after the pandemic has run its course. This garnered different responses, with only a handful of U.S. adults planning to carry on investing more time in most media activities. Again though, watching movies and shows on streaming platforms and reading or listening to books were the most popular options.

As of June 2020, 63 percent of parents in the United States reported that their teenagers spent more time using social media than they did in pre-pandemic times. Overall, 25 percent of respondents stated that their children used social media less, and 12 percent said that their teens usage of online platforms had not changed.

A survey by IPSOS revealed that Latin American respondents were unlikely to reduce their time spent on social media in 2020. In Peru, for instance, only 16 percent of respondents said they would use social networks less than before in 2020. The highest percentage was found among Colombian respondents, with 26 percent of them claiming they would consume less social media in that year.

According to data gathered in a survey held in 2024, ** percent of responding U.S. adults said that they got their news from social media often, the highest recorded in the time period shown. After a growth of people who claimed to never get news from social media from ** percent in 2020 to 32 percent in 2021, this share dropped back to ** percent in 2024.