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.

As social distancing continues, US social network users are spending more time than previously estimated with social platforms.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco joins global director of public relations Douglas Clark to discuss how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting eMarketer’s forecasts on time spent with social media, including revised numbers for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

Compared with most other countries, time spent with social media also remained on the low side at 1:13 per day. Of all the countries that GlobalWebIndex surveyed in H1 2020, only Japan recorded a shorter daily time spent with social (47 minutes).

The share of internet users who visited social platforms in the prior month rose to 94.2% of those polled in H1 2020, and time spent with social media was also up to 3:31 per day on average. Smartphones are also integral to the rising penetration of voice search, via services like Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri.

(GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its social network category, which tends to raise the level of engagement and time spent with social media overall.). Subscription video services and digital audio posted significant gains. Between H1 2019 and H1 2020, smart TV penetration declined from 46.0% to 44.8%, according to GlobalWebIndex.

Despite this, time spent with broadcast TV was still well ahead of time spent with online TV in New Zealand, at 1:56 per day per day and 1:11, respectively. Broadcast TV also claimed more time than social networking, which averaged 1:48 each day. (GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its social category, and this tends to boost both reach and time spent for social media overall.).

Moreover, time spent with social actually fell in Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, and the Philippines, to name a few. In many advanced economies—including Germany, Sweden, Spain, the UK, and the US—time spent with PCs and tablets still exceeds time spent with mobile devices, and by a large margin.

Social media engages more internet users in Indonesia than broadcast TV does. As in 2019, over 93% of internet users ages 16 to 64 polled in Indonesia visited social networks in the prior month, according to GlobalWebIndex. The average time spent with social media was 3 hours, 19 minutes (3:19) per day. These figures were among the highest GlobalWebIndex recorded globally.

Social media also ranked third in terms of time spent, accounting for 3:14 daily, on average. This is no surprise, given the amount of social networking that takes place on mobile. It’s also relevant that GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its list of social media platforms; that likely increases penetration and time spent with the medium.

It’s worth noting that GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its social media category, so that anyone streaming video on that platform counts as a social network user. This may also help to explain why the penetration rates of social media and digital video are so similar. Time spent on social networks slipped by 10 minutes between H1 2019 and H1 2020—but it remained high by global standards, at 2:47.

An estimated 92.0% of internet users were active on social media in the month prior to polling, and time spent on social accounted for more than 3 hours per day on average, according to internet users’ own estimates. As in H1 2019, social media remained well ahead of broadcast TV in time spent. In most respects, ownership of advanced digital devices has hardly changed since 2019.

Time spent with smartphones and nonmobile devices mirrored those devices’ high penetration rates. In H1 2020, mobile phones claimed an average of 4 hours, 31 minutes (4:31) per day, compared with 4:06 spent on PCs and tablets. Both figures were up year over year (YoY). Time spent with social networking—which totaled 3:00 per day—rose marginally and boosted mobile consumption overall in H1 2020.

Daily engagement with social media added up to 1:36, essentially identical to time spent with social in 2019. But penetration of social networking increased 2.9 percentage points, to 84.6%. Among newer digital devices, smart TVs were the clear winner in terms of popularity. Half (49.9%) of respondents owned a smart TV in H1 2020.

(GlobalWebIndex’s social media category includes YouTube, which tends to boost calculations of penetration and time spent with the medium.). Time devoted to online TV and video streaming also rose year over year (YoY) from 1:10 to 1:29. And gaming posted a similar increase from 1:12 to 1:27.

Compared with video streaming, fewer internet users in Italy (83.6%) engaged with social media. On the other hand, the time spent daily with social platforms averaged 1:50—almost an hour more than time devoted to video streaming, at 58 minutes. This may partly be because GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in the category of social media.