In recent years, the story of social media was all about cutting down time on social media and spend more time outdoors, spend less time on websites, be more aware of the actions of social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under lockdown, however, things changed very drastically. As recorded in our coronavirus study, at the beginning of April, just under 50 % of consumers said that they have been spending more time on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Levels are starting to stabilize from the initial increase, but because of the outbreak, 43 percent still confess to logging in for longer, and 19 percent today say they will spend longer on social media. Old theories about social media have to be re-examined because of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
News consumption on these media has been slowly increasing since we started monitoring social media habits back in 2014, but the pandemic has placed this behavior at the center of attention. “Doomscrolling” (reading a long stream of disheartening social media headlines) may soon join our dictionaries, confirming how powerful it has been during the crisis as a news source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the initial stages of the crisis, the need for up-to-date data was overwhelming, with social media offering easy and quick access to important updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the world of social media that we are constantly living in today. The third most important reason we go on social media these days is found amusing or entertaining content (33%), only behind filling up spare time (34%). This unique motivation is often cited by our youngest generation, Gen Z (40%), as seen in the chart above, but it is also very common among millennial generation (35%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n