Where in the world do people use social media the most?

This report reviews our final 2020 numbers and new 2021 forecast for US time spent with media, highlighting pre- and post-pandemic estimates and expectations. Special attention is paid to TV, connected TV, OTT, digital audio, and social media.

Facebook and Instagram claim the most users and time spent in Canada, but emerging platforms indicate a shift may come in the years ahead. Social Media Minutes Continue to Inch Upward. Time spent with social media among Canada’s adult population will surpass three-quarters of an hour this year, at 46 minutes daily.

Social media time spiked 15.1% among US users in 2020, but it won’t hold onto all those gains. Among social network users, time spent with social media will decline by 2.0% this year. Growth will stay mostly flat through 2023 as people gradually resume in-person socializing. Read Next.

A Pandemic-Fueled Social Media Bump Will Be Maintained. Unlike some of the trends we’ve examined so far, time spent with social media will plateau post-pandemic. Contrasting with the resets we expect to see for overall media time and particularly video, last year’s social media bump in the UK will hold through to at least 2023.

But there are still a few surprises in our updated forecasts for social network users and time spent with social media. Has the pandemic’s effect on social media usage worn off? Yes and no. This year, monthly US social network users will grow at less than half the pace of 2020, when stay-at-home orders and other pandemic-related factors caused more people to turn to social media.

On today's episode, we discuss Facebook's new Ray-Ban smart glasses, whether time spent on TikTok actually surpassed YouTube, what branded gaming on Roblox looks like, how to get noticed as a marketer, whether selling Super Bowl ads early is a good move, how to make friends while working from home, how two people reversed climate change in their hometown, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst Suzy Davidkhanian, director of reports editing Rahul Chadha, and analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch.

The pandemic accelerated the increase in time spent with mobile activities in the US. Most of these gains will stick as people return to a more normal life in 2021.

This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

Overall average time spent with video games increased almost a full hour from 8.6 hours per week in 2019 to 9.5 hours in 2020, with 76% of respondents saying they play at least 1 hour of games per week regardless of their preferred platform.