Data shows time spent on social media by US users grows by a small margin in 2021

There’s been a small increase in the time spent on social media by the average US user in the year of 2021. This was only a few minutes of gradual increase compared to the previous year.

Back in 2020, US users’ time spent on social media was increased by a total of 16%. The root cause of this was obviously the pandemic which encouraged more people to access the benefits of the internet. But that’s not all. Several events happened in that year which arose controversies and discussions that made their way on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and more. Although, with the gradual decline in those events and particularly, the pandemic situation, we saw things becoming more and more normal. In 2020, we had an average timespan of 94.5 minutes which was huge.

With that in mind, it makes sense that the time spent on social media networks would see a decline in 2021. Unlike the year before, 2021 reached a very low overall growth with just 2.6% increase reaching 97 minutes on average. But this isn’t bad at all compared to 2020 which had huge gains thanks to the pandemic. Although, unlike the previous year, the growth wasn’t carried because of platforms like Facebook and Pinterest which are more suited for digital marketing and ideas. Instead, we have community and entertainment-based apps like Tiktok, Snapchat and LinkedIn to thank for keeping everyone engaged in the digital world.

A number of factors are affecting this growing process. Some of those include new social media platforms seeing an increase in user counts such as Tiktok. But that’s not all, as TikTok is mainly a platform for sharing short videos and interacting with those videos, the time spent is naturally more than other ones. Which is why TikTok is one of the most important reasons why we’re seeing growth even after the pandemic.

It is predicted that by 2023, the time spent will gradually go down to 94 minutes. As we’re nearing the end of the pandemic, this decline will continue for a little more time but it is predicted that it won’t drop below 90 minutes. 2020 proved to be a really strong year for bringing people to the digital world and its benefits.


H/T: eMarketer.

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