ADMIT it. You spend your day on your phone. With the COVID-19 pandemic, people have taken refuge in social networks to keep in touch and up to date. So much so that the time spent online has increased exponentially. Which social network is used the most? In which country do internet users spend the most time online? We have the figures!

According to GWI and We Are Social's study, Digital 2022 Global Overview Report, a "typical" global internet user now spends 6 hours 58 minutes a day surfing the Internet, "across all devices." This corresponds to more than 40% of a person's waking life, spent online, if we consider that an individual sleeps 7 to 8 hours a day. That's an increase of 4 minutes in one year. It's an amount that may seem insignificant, but when multiplied by all the internet users in the world, represents more than 5 billion additional days of use, says We Are Social. According to the study's estimates, internet users could spend more than 12.5 trillion hours online worldwide by 2022.

Which nationality spends the most time on the internet?

South Africa has the most addicted internet users. South Africans aged 16 to 64 say they spend an average of 10 hours and 46 minutes a day online. This is followed by Filipinos, Brazilians and Colombians with more than 10 hours per day. Japanese users' reports establish a national average of less than 4.5 hours per day, while for China the average is 5 hours and 15 minutes.

More specifically, the time spent on social networks represents 35% of an internet user's online activity. This represents 2 hours and 27 minutes on average per day, which is two minutes more (+1.4%) than last year.

However, the study indicates a decrease in the use of social networks as a percentage of the overall time spent online since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. According to We Are Social's analysis, this phenomenon can be explained by the variety of new online activities adopted by internet users in the last two years, giving less space to community platforms. In 2019, this percentage had reached its highest rate since 2013 with 36.4% compared with 35% in 2020 and 35.2% in 2021.

Despite this, social media continues to bring together internet users around the world. Users are expected to spend 4 trillion hours using community platforms, globally in 2022, the study said.

Which is the most popular social network?

Based on App Annie's analysis, We Are Social has determined the platforms most used by internet users worldwide. Although the study does not concern all users but only Android users, which "account for roughly 7 in 10 smartphones in use around the world today," the finding is still representative of the majority of internet users in the world.

YouTube stands out with the site's average user spending nearly 23.7 hours on it per month, which is almost a full day. Facebook comes second with 19.6 hours per month, as does its Chinese rival, TikTok. However, TikTok is only in fifth place as it has fewer users on its Android application. WhatsApp follows with 18.6 hours per month. The Meta group has a major presence in the ranking since Instagram takes fourth place with 11.2 hours per month, for Android users, worldwide.

While on average, the time spent on Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, per month, remained relatively stable, Instagram observed a growth of 10% compared to last year, equivalent to an additional hour of use per month.

A runaway success since 2020, TikTok shows the biggest increase with 48% more than last year at the same time, or an average of 6 hours and 20 minutes more per month. The United Kingdom, where Android users spend the most time on the Chinese social network with 27.3 hours, followed by Russia (26.3 hours) and finally the United States with 25.6 hours.