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.

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.

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 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.