Most people would agree that using social media is the sort of thing that they do each and every day, but excessive social media use has also become a bit of a problem. Using social media in an excessive manner has been proven to be rather unhealthy, and when you take a look at just how much time people spend on such platforms you would get a clearer picture of why this is a problem that needs to be solved.
The main issue with social media apps is that they have been designed to be as addictive as possible. That might be why you have such a hard time avoiding using them in the first place. Sortlist just conducted a study where it analyzed how much time people spend on various social media apps, and it turns out that the average person spends around two hours and twenty five minutes on social media on a daily basis, which comes up to almost 37 days a year if you look at it that way.
The most widely used app according to this report turned out to be YouTube, with people spending around 11 days and 14 hours on it per year on average. Facebook came in second, with 9 days and 18 hours of average usage on an annual basis. If you were to combine all of Meta’s social media platforms, total time spend on those apps alone came up to over 27 days per year so this is where the majority of your social media time is being spent even if YouTube is the most used app overall.
A lot of disparity can be seen if you break this down by country as well. People in the Philippines tend to be the heaviest internet users in general. They spend around 166 days a year on the internet, and 65 of those days are on social media which is twice the global average. Brazil, Colombia and South Africa are tied in second place with people in those countries spending 154 days on the internet in total, but their social media use varies a fair bit.
Colombia is the second highest social media user in the world, with 57 days being spent using social media out of the total 154 days on the internet. Brazil comes in second with 56 days, followed by South Africa with 54 days. Taiwanese people are among the heaviest internet users in the world with 124 days of continued use, but their social media usage is on the lower side at just 29 days which is lower than the global average and represents the lowest total proportion of internet time being dedicated to social media platforms overall so there is at least one example of social media dominating internet usage somewhat less.
Social media is not the only thing that people tend to do somewhat obsessively. Looking at average session lengths can determine that gaming is a highly popular category in this regard. Average session length for three different gaming categories was longer than that of any other type of app. People playing sports games took part in sessions that were 23 minutes long on average, with sessions for casual games generally being 21 minutes long and 19 minutes for hyper casual games and the like.
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The main issue with social media apps is that they have been designed to be as addictive as possible. That might be why you have such a hard time avoiding using them in the first place. Sortlist just conducted a study where it analyzed how much time people spend on various social media apps, and it turns out that the average person spends around two hours and twenty five minutes on social media on a daily basis, which comes up to almost 37 days a year if you look at it that way.
The most widely used app according to this report turned out to be YouTube, with people spending around 11 days and 14 hours on it per year on average. Facebook came in second, with 9 days and 18 hours of average usage on an annual basis. If you were to combine all of Meta’s social media platforms, total time spend on those apps alone came up to over 27 days per year so this is where the majority of your social media time is being spent even if YouTube is the most used app overall.
A lot of disparity can be seen if you break this down by country as well. People in the Philippines tend to be the heaviest internet users in general. They spend around 166 days a year on the internet, and 65 of those days are on social media which is twice the global average. Brazil, Colombia and South Africa are tied in second place with people in those countries spending 154 days on the internet in total, but their social media use varies a fair bit.
Colombia is the second highest social media user in the world, with 57 days being spent using social media out of the total 154 days on the internet. Brazil comes in second with 56 days, followed by South Africa with 54 days. Taiwanese people are among the heaviest internet users in the world with 124 days of continued use, but their social media usage is on the lower side at just 29 days which is lower than the global average and represents the lowest total proportion of internet time being dedicated to social media platforms overall so there is at least one example of social media dominating internet usage somewhat less.
Social media is not the only thing that people tend to do somewhat obsessively. Looking at average session lengths can determine that gaming is a highly popular category in this regard. Average session length for three different gaming categories was longer than that of any other type of app. People playing sports games took part in sessions that were 23 minutes long on average, with sessions for casual games generally being 21 minutes long and 19 minutes for hyper casual games and the like.
Read next: Here's what a majority of consumers think about antivirus tools