The 'Digital 2020' report, published in partnership with We Are Social and Hootsuite, show that digital, mobile, and social media have become the inseparable part of everyday life for people all around the world.
The essential headline numbers in the report show how digital's role in people's lives have reached new heights, with more people spending more time doing more things online than ever before:
There are 7.75 billion people in the world, and more than 4.5 billion of them are internet users. This is an increase of 298 million new users compared to January 2019. And among that many internet users, 3.8 billion people are also social media users (an increase of 124 million).
While the number of people connected to the internet increases, roughly 3.2 billion people are still not connected.
Most of these people come from Southern Asia (31% of the total), and countries in Africa (27% of the total).
And globally, there are more than 5.19 billion people that own mobile phones.
It should be noted that in this 2020 report, there are some changes in the underlying sources and reporting methodologies for some of the core data points. What this means, various numbers in this Digital 2020 collection aren't comparable to similar data points in previous reports.
The world’s internet users will spend a cumulative 1.25 billion years online in 2020, with more than a third of that time spent on social media. Users in the Philippines are predicted to spend an average of 9 hours and 45 minutes per day online. A huge contrast in Japan, where people will only spend 4 hours and 22 minutes per day.
People in the Philippines are also the most who use social media networks. According to the report, the average internet user aged 16 to 64 spending almost 4 hours per day on social platforms. Japan is the least with people spending an average of just 45 minutes per day on social media.
Still about social media networks, there is no doubt that Facebook is still the king.
Trends in user numbers reported in the company’s earnings announcements suggest that the platform should have passed the 2.5 billion monthly active users (MAU) mark, with its number of users continued to grow steadily across most countries.
TikTok was probably the social media of 2019, with its number of users increasing to a staggering 800 million monthly active users.
But since most of its users come from China, it means that 300 million of its users are outside of China. This would put TikTok similar to Snapchat or Twitter. Still, TikTok is placed sixth place in the global mobile app rankings by monthly active users for 2019.
As for video-streaming platform, YouTube still commands the greatest share, with roughly 3 million people watching at least one YouTube video each month.
