WEF global poll: Filipinos spent most time on social media in ’19

FILIPINOS spent the most time on social-media networks in 2019, according to the latest Global Web Index (GWI) released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The data showed Filipinos spent as much as four hours and one minute on average on social-media networks daily. The global Internet users, however, only spent half the time on social-media sites at two hours and 23 minutes.

More affluent countries such as the Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States spend less than two hours on social media daily.

“Emerging markets continue to spend the most time on social networks during a typical day. This could be driven by these markets generally having younger populations, with the 16 to 24-year-old segment driving growth globally. The Philippines spent the most time connected to social networks, devoting just over four hours a day to the digital sphere,” WEF said.

This despite a relatively low Internet penetration rate in the country. Internet penetration in the country is estimated at 64 percent in 2019.

Nigeria, which was second to the Philippines in terms of time spent on social media, had the lowest Internet penetration rate at 36 percent.

However, the Philippines still had higher Internet penetration rates than its Asean-5 peers such as Indonesia at 39 percent, Vietnam at 55 percent, and Thailand at 58 percent.

Only Singapore and Malaysia had higher Internet penetration rates than the Philippines at 85 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

“Where a market has a medium to low Internet penetration, its online population can be very different to its total population; broadly speaking, the lower the country’s overall Internet penetration rate, the more likely it is that its Internet users will be young, urban, affluent and educated. This is the case throughout much of LatAm [Latin America], MEA [Middle East and Africa] and Asia Pacific,” WEF said.

In Asia and the Pacific, where the Philippine belongs, the average number of social-media accounts of Internet users was the highest anywhere in the world at 9.5 accounts.

This is above the global average of almost 8 accounts. The GWI data showed this was a 29.03-percent increase from 6.2 accounts posted in 2015.

The increase in the number of social-media accounts is driven by Baby Boomers who, between 2015 and 2019, saw a 76.6-percent increase in their social-media accounts from only 3 accounts in 2015 to 5.3 accounts in 2019.

Data showed this was followed by Gen Z which saw their accounts increase 59.32 percent to 9.4 accounts in 2019 from 5.9 in 2015.

Social-media accounts owned by Millennials also increased by 57.14 percent to 9.9 accounts in 2019 from 6.3 accounts in 2015 and Gen X at 55.1 percent to 7.6 accounts from 4.9 accounts.

“There are many factors that are influencing these findings, including the growth in Internet usage among older consumers who have arrived late to the social-media party, and the stagnation of user growth on certain key platforms,” the report stated.

“However, the most important trend to understand regarding this peak in multi-networking is the rise of younger, mobile-only Internet users who focus their social engagement on a select group of platforms,” it added.

WEF said in around half of the markets that Global Web Index surveyed, social-media use had shrunk or plateaued in the first quarter of 2019 when compared with 2018 figures.

This was particularly evident in some of the more developed markets which may be driven by aging populations in these countries. During a typical day Japanese people spend less than an hour staying connected digitally.

Germany posts only slightly higher numbers, with users going on social media for just over an hour every day, while the UK and the US both spent closer to two hours per day engaging with social media.

All figures in this report are drawn from Global Web Index’s online research among Internet users aged 16 to 64. The study only interviewed respondents aged 16-64 and are representative of the online populations of each market, not its total population.

Each year, GWI interviews over 688,000 Internet users aged 16-64 across 46 markets. In 2019, the GWI results are based on its second quarter and third quarter waves of research across 46 countries, with a global sample of 284,929 respondents.

The most number of respondents were in the United States at 49,850 respondents followed by China at 30,535 respondents. In the Philippines, around 3,245 were interviewed for the survey.

Respondents complete an online questionnaire that asks them a wide range of questions about their lives, lifestyles and digital behaviors.