FILIPINOS spend nearly half the year online and more than a third of that time is spent on social media, according to a Brussels-based marketing and advertising consultant.
Based on a study by Sortlist, Filipinos spent 10 hours, 56 minutes per day online or 166 days per year. Of this time, four hours and 15 minutes are spent on social media per day which is equivalent to 65 days in a year.
This placed the Philippines as the country that spends the most time online and on social media. Sortlist estimated that 67 percent of the country’s population use the internet.
“Over the past 18 months or so we have spent more time behind a screen than ever. As a result of the pandemic, many people have been forced to work from home, spend copious amounts of time on Zoom calls and used their free time to scroll social media and utilize the array of apps at our disposal, but all of this time spent online can build up,” Nicolas Finet, Co-Founder and CMO at Sortlist, said.
“In today’s world the majority of day-to-day tasks are completed online and this isn’t a bad thing, but it’s important that we remind ourselves that there is more to enjoy than just social media and online browsing,” he added.
The top 10 economies, apart from the Philippines, include Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Argentina, Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, and Taiwan.
In terms of the percentage of the population who use the internet, Taiwan had the highest at 90 percent of its population using the internet followed by Argentina at 80 percent and Brazil at 75 percent.
The data also showed the average person spent around 52,925 minutes scrolling social media each year. This translates to 36 days, 18 hours, and 5 minutes on social media.
Sports games
SPORTS games are also the apps taking up the most of people’s time, as the average user spends around 23 minutes on these apps, followed by casual gaming at 21 minutes
Looking at specific apps, YouTube is where most people spend their time accounting for 11 days and 14 hours. This is almost double the time spent by people on TikTok at 6 days and 16 hours.
“Taking a digital detox can be extremely beneficial and there are a number of steps you can take to have some time away from your screen including deleting social media apps for a short period of time; removing notifications from apps to avoid temptation; and setting aside some ‘phone free time’ each day to enjoy other activities,” Finet said.
“Taking a digital detox isn’t always easy and temptation can get the better of us, but if you’re persistent and enjoy some time away from your screen, it’s very likely you’ll reap the benefits from doing so,” he added.
Sortlist said the average daily time spent using the internet and social media was sourced from Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2021 and refers to internet users aged 16-64.
The most popular social media and video streaming apps and the average monthly time spent on these were also sourced from Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2021.
Time spent on different categories of apps was sourced from Statista’s data on average app session length per user worldwide from 2019 to 2020, by vertical.
Image credits: PHOTO BY FERLI ACHIRULLI KAMARUDDIN | DREAMSTIME.COM