Attention & Time
How much time do people spend on social media every day?
How much time do we spend on social media? GWI surveys users 16-64 in 54 countries. The average grew from 90 minutes/day in 2012 to 145 in 2020 (COVID peak), briefly settled at 143 minutes in 2024, and has climbed back to 159 minutes/day by 2026 as video-centric feeds (YouTube, TikTok) are now counted as part of social time. That's 2 hours 39 minutes, roughly 16% of our waking hours. Over a lifetime, over 6.5 years on social platforms.
Roughly 6.63 minutes every hour.
Source: DataReportal Digital 2026 Global Overview Report; GlobalWebIndex (GWI) survey 54 countries. AnythingCounter overview
What 159 minutes a day is actually doing to your brain, relationships, and sense of time
At 159 minutes of social and video feeds per day, the average person puts in roughly 40 full days per year on platforms. Over a lifetime of use from age 16 to 75, that adds up to over 6.5 years of waking life, more than most people spend eating, or in face-to-face contact with their closest friends. For women aged 16 to 24, the figure is already above 3 hours 40 minutes a day, or around 22% of waking hours.
The mental health picture is contested, but the direction is consistent. Large-scale studies by Twenge et al. (JAMA Pediatrics, 2019) and Coyne et al. (Computers in Human Behavior) link heavy social media use to increased anxiety and depressive symptoms, particularly in teenage girls. The mechanism is not the platforms themselves but two specific behaviors: passive scrolling and social comparison. Actively creating, commenting, and connecting with people you know shows far weaker negative associations than passively watching others.
Attention is where the cost is least visible. Neuroscientist Gloria Mark's research at UC Irvine found that after an interruption, the average person needs 23 minutes to fully return to a demanding task. Every social media check, even a 30-second glance, incurs that recovery cost. For knowledge workers it shows up as measurable lost output. For anyone else, it quietly compresses the time available for anything that requires sustained concentration.
Daily social media time over time
Average daily social media time grew from 90 minutes in 2012 to 159 minutes in 2026, making social and video feeds collectively the most time-consuming discretionary activity in modern life after sleep and work.
| Year | Minutes/day | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 90 min | Facebook dominant; mobile beginning |
| 2016 | 120 min | Mobile social media; Instagram era |
| 2020 | 145 min | COVID-19 drives all-time high |
| 2024 | 143 min | Near-plateau in developed markets |
| 2026 | 159 min | Video-centric platforms (YouTube, TikTok) now counted as social time; emerging markets still growing |
| 2028 (forecast) | 170 min | Emerging market growth + continued blurring of social / video lines |
Key social media time statistics
Global average: 2 hours 39 minutes per day on social and video feeds (DataReportal Digital 2026; 18 h 36 min/week)
Daily social-feed time has grown from 90 min (2012) to 143 min (2024) to 159 min (2026) as video-centric platforms are now counted alongside traditional social networks
Women aged 16-24 spend an average of 25 h 45 min per week (~3 h 40 min/day) on social and video feeds, roughly 22% of their waking hours
Over a lifetime, the average internet user will spend well over 6.5 years on social platforms
Typical social media user actively uses 6.5 different platforms each month (DataReportal 2026)
Social media time vs. time with friends, today
While 159 minutes/day flow into social platforms, people now average only 35 minutes/day in face-to-face contact with friends. The gap has been widening for two decades, and it shows no sign of closing.
Social media time: 2 hours 39 minutes that reshaped human attention
The decade-and-a-half of social media ascendance
Between 2012 and 2026, social media time nearly doubled from 90 to 159 minutes a day, without any single moment where people consciously decided to give it more of their lives. Each new platform added time rather than replacing the one before it: Facebook did not kill Twitter, Instagram did not kill Facebook, TikTok did not kill Instagram. The result is a typical user in 2026 actively checking 6.5 different platforms each month, which is roughly one new platform for every two years since the iPhone launched.
Why the number jumped from 143 to 159 in two years
The 2024 figure was 143 minutes; two years later it stands at 159, and much of that increase is a counting change rather than new behavior. DataReportal and GWI now include YouTube and TikTok in the social media total alongside Facebook and X. Pure social-network time alone has barely moved: 61 minutes a day, compared to 7 hours 6 minutes for the full combined category. That combination makes intuitive sense. Nobody sitting in front of a TikTok feed feels like they are doing something categorically different from someone scrolling Instagram.
Plateau and divergence
In Western Europe and North America, social media time has barely moved since 2020, when COVID pushed it to its peak. Sleep, work, and commuting are not compressible, and the hours available for discretionary phone use are more or less fixed. The growth is happening elsewhere. Kenya leads globally at close to 3 hours 30 minutes a day on social networks alone. Nigeria, the Philippines, Brazil, and South Africa are all well above the world average, which is still rising because smartphone adoption in those markets is still catching up.
The research on social media, mental health, and attention
| Year | Finding | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | GWI/DataReportal: 90 minutes/day average global social media time | 90 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2016 | GWI: 120 minutes/day (2 hours) average | 120 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2018 | GWI: 136 minutes/day | 136 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2020 | GWI: 145 minutes/day, peak; COVID-19 lockdowns drive surge | 145 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2021 | GWI: 142 minutes/day, slight decline from 2020 peak | 142 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2024 | DataReportal 2024: 143 minutes/day; 35.8% of online time; Kenya leads at 3h 43m (pre-video-reclassification) | 143 minutes/day | DataReportal |
| 2026 | DataReportal Digital 2026: 159 min/day (18 h 36 min/week); women 16-24 at 3 h 40 min/day; ~16% of waking hours | 159 minutes/day | DataReportal |
From 90 minutes to 159: how social and video feed time grew year by year
- 201290 minutes/day, Facebook era; social media a secondary habit
- 2016120 minutes/day, mobile-first social media; Instagram, Snapchat mainstream
- 2018136 minutes/day, Stories format adds daily engagement loops
- 2020145 minutes/day, peak; COVID-19 lockdowns drive all-time high
- 2024143 minutes/day; 35.8% of all online time (pre-video-reclassification)
- 2026159 minutes/day (18 h 36 min/week) including video-centric feeds; ~6.5-year lifetime total
In perspective
At 159 minutes a day, a person starting social media at 16 and stopping at 75 will have put in just over 6.5 years on these platforms, more than most people spend eating over the same period.
Across 5.79 billion social media users, 159 minutes a day adds up to close to 15.3 billion hours consumed globally every day. Whether that time is well spent is a question the platforms have strong incentives not to investigate.
Frequently asked questions
- How much time does the average person spend on social media per day?
- As of 2026, the global average is 2 hours 39 minutes (159 minutes) per day among internet users aged 16-64, according to DataReportal's Digital 2026 Global Overview Report and GWI. That equates to 18 hours 36 minutes per week, or roughly 16% of the typical waking day.
- How has social media usage changed over time?
- Daily social media usage grew from 90 minutes/day in 2012 to 145 minutes/day in 2020 (COVID peak). It briefly dipped to 143 minutes in 2024 before climbing to 159 minutes in 2026, largely because GWI now counts time on video-centric platforms (YouTube, TikTok) alongside traditional social networks. Younger users are well above the average: women aged 16-24 average 25 hours 45 minutes per week (≈ 3 h 40 min/day).
- Which countries spend the most time on social media?
- Kenya leads globally at around 3 hours 30 minutes per day on pure social networks (excluding video feeds). Other high-usage countries include the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil and South Africa. Japan and Germany remain among the lowest at under 1 hour per day.
Cite this rate
AnythingCounter derived rate, last checked September 2026: about 159 minutes per day.
Method: Based on DataReportal 2026; DataReportal / Meltwater / We Are Social 2026, shown as a daily rate.
Suggested citation: AnythingCounter, "Time spent on social media (per person)," September 2026, https://anythingcounter.com/time-spent-on-social-media
Primary source: DataReportal; DataReportal / Meltwater / We Are Social.
How this number is calculated, and how much to trust it
The 159 minutes/day global average comes from DataReportal's Digital 2026 Global Overview Report, citing GWI survey data across 54 countries (18 hours 36 minutes per week ÷ 7 = 159.4 min/day). This figure now explicitly includes time on video-centric social platforms like YouTube and TikTok alongside traditional social networks. To convert to a global collective rate: 159 min × 5.79 billion social media users = 920.6 billion minutes/day ÷ 1,440 min/day ÷ 365 days = 1.75 million person-years consumed per day. The live counter uses the per-person accumulation since midnight: seconds elapsed × 159/86,400.
The 2026 figure is slightly broader than earlier editions: GWI now explicitly counts time on YouTube and TikTok alongside traditional social networks, which explains part of the jump from 143 minutes in 2024. The underlying survey methodology and country coverage have been consistent since 2012, which makes the long-run trend reliable even if the precise 2026 number reflects the definition change.
Sources: see below. More detail on our methodology page.
Sources
DataReportal - Digital 2024: Time Spent on Social Media - Statusbrew - Social Media Time Statistics - DataReportal - Digital 2026 Global Overview Report: Time Spent on Social & Video Feeds - DataReportal - Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update Report (internet users 6 billion / 73.2 % of world population; 5.66 billion social media users; 1 billion monthly AI users).
Worth a look... Attention span data - Ads seen per day - Time with friends.