Social media continues to blossom across numerous channels like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat—and when it comes to the number one platform for accessing them, mobile is king.
A new report from comScore titled 2016 U.S. Cross Platform Future In Focus provides a closer look at social media use and explains how accessible it has become on mobile.
As shown, the use of desktop computers for social media has dwindled over the past couple of years (from 33 percent, down to 21 percent), while smartphones have grown by 8 percent. In 2015, smartphone apps made up 61 percent of the time spent on social media. Tablets, meanwhile, are holding about steady, after seeing a small resurgence in 2014.
The report also reveals that approximately one in five minutes of all digital media time (about 19 percent) is spent on social sites or with social media apps, which exceeds all the other categories in the report. About 80 percent of that usage comes from mobile devices.
Furthermore, the report indicates that services like Snapchat, Instagram, Vine and Tumblr seem to have a much younger audience than others, with Snapchat in the lead—76 percent of its users being between the ages of 18-to-34, which could be something that marketers may want to take advantage of.
Other takeaways include:
- Consumers made more significant use of their mobile devices when it came to both shopping and purchase activity.
- Digital is just about the top advertising medium, even with the rise of ad blocking.
- Print publishers are finding growth in the digital field with advertising, making proper use of mobile in an effort to reach out to a bigger audience.
- Digital media usage continues to grow, reaching nearly 50 percent within all digital media time spent. Smartphone app usage is a big factor in this.
