Millennials’ Daily Time Online Peaks

Millennials around the world are still spending plenty of time with various media, such as social media, streaming TV, and podcasts. However, their “time spent online has long passed its peak,” according to a report from GWI.

The report indicates that daily time spent online by Millennials (born 1983-1996) has been on a steady decline from a peak of 7 hours and 36 minutes in 2017, with the average now sitting at 6 hours and 48 minutes this year. It’s worth noting that time spent online is calculated as a combination of time spent with mobiles, PCs, laptops, and tablets, and appears to exclude connected TVs, which have grown substantially in usage in recent years.

In fact, the decline in Millennials’ time online over the past few years owes exclusively to a big drop in PC/laptop/tablet time, which has fallen from more than 4 hours (4:05) in 2015 to less than 3 hours (2:55) this year.

By contrast, time spent online via mobile continues to grow, up from just over 3 hours in 2015 (3:02) to almost 4 hours (3:53) this year.

Nonetheless, GWI’s analysis suggests that “Millennials are turning away from the digital world” and that “their priorities are moving offline as they place more value in physical experiences.” This coincides with changing situations for Millennials as they age. For example, the share of Millennials either self-employed or in full-time work has grown from 60% in 2015 to 79% this year. Additionally, the share who are married has more than doubled during that period (66%, up from 31%), as has the share with kids or expecting kids (68%, up from 31%). (Young adults in the US are taking longer to reach these milestones than they did about 40 years ago.)

Still, Millennials are spending 2-and-a-half hours per day using social media, per the report, making this their single most time-consuming media activity. Meta properties dominate this social media activity, with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger emerging as the platforms with the highest adoption rates by this cohort. However, usage of these properties has declined over the past couple of years, with the exception of WhatsApp, while TikTok has experienced a big increase in usage, and Telegram Messenger adoption is rising.

The report also shows that Millennials want to see funny and informative content on social media apps, though their preferences depend on the app. For example, funny content (long a draw for Millennials) is most preferred on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, while informative content is preferred on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter. It’s a tie at the top for YouTube, while community-driven content is the preferred type on Discord.

Finally, one-third of Millennials either trust influencers “completely” (13%) or “a lot” (20%), though a plurality (47%) trust them “a little.” About half agree that influencer recommendations are more engaging than regular ads, though fewer (36%) believe they’re more trustworthy than regular ads. Even so, almost half (45%) are likely to buy a product recommended by influencers.