Depending on the research source, up to 51% of US adults are using social media at higher rates during the pandemic.
But even though elevated social usage continued at least into May, causing us to upgrade our forecast for time spent on social networks by US social network users, eMarketer believes that when consumers eventually get back to their normal routines of school, work and social activities, the trends will moderate.
This will start to happen later in 2020, with a more visible downward trend evident in 2021 and beyond.
In an April 2020 GlobalWebIndex poll, only 9% of US internet users ages 16 to 64 said they expected to continue spending more time on social media after the pandemic eases.
Even fewer (5%) planned to keep spending more time on messaging services. These figures were well below other activities consumers expected to continue, such as
- Cooking,
- Spending more time as a family and
- Watching streaming TV services.
Americans aren’t alone in thinking that their social media and messaging behaviors won’t stick.
Just 17% of respondents worldwide expected their elevated social media usage habits would continue, and 19% thought they’d still use messaging at high rates. Read the rest at eMarketer.
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