Last year, the average US adult spent more time per day with most media formats and devices, including TV. Although adults will spend nearly as much time with media this year, their TV viewing time will drop below pre-pandemic levels.

We forecast that this year, adults in China will spend an average of 3 hours, 16 minutes (3:16) per day on smartphone activities, which we define as excluding calls on the cellular network. Up 25 minutes, or 14.6%, from 2020, this total will vault China to first place in the world for that metric. The US will drop to No. 2, with adults there spending 3:10 on smartphones daily.

More time spent at home during the pandemic means more time being spent on social media. But not all social platforms are benefitting in the same way. In our latest forecast on time spent with media in the US, we expect adult social network users to log an average of 1 hour, 22 minutes (1:22) per day in 2020, up nearly 7 minutes over last year.

Facebook’s move last year to discourage passive consumption of content, especially videos, has impacted engagement. Average daily time spent on the platform by US adult users fell by 3 minutes in 2018. And that time will remain unchanged this year, per the latest eMarketer forecast on US time spent with media. In fact, we have reduced our forecast for Facebook compared with the previous figures released in Q3 2018.

We estimate that one in four US internet users will use TikTok this year, and adult users will spend almost 32 minutes per day on average with the short-video app. Evan Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of creative agency Movers + Shakers, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss TikTok's ad products, how advertisers are using the app to build brand equity, and the need to tailor social creative to make sense for each platform.

Average daily time spent with media shot past the 10-hour mark last year, pushing media consumption to new levels in Canada.