Time spent on Instagram is expected to grow this year, while Facebook will not recover from last year’s drop in engagement.
In a new report from eMarketer, estimates for time spent on Facebook in 2019 has been reduced compared to the figures released late last year.
Instagram, on the other hand, is expected to grow its average daily time spent by users by one minute every year through 2021.
eMarketer says average daily time spent on Snapchat has “plateaued.”
Facebook engagement in decline
Average daily time spent on Facebook by US adult users fell by 3 minutes in 2018. eMarketer attributes this to Facebook discouraging passive consumption of content, namely videos.
According to eMarketer’s updated estimates, Facebook users will spend an average of 38 minutes per day on the platform (on all devices), which is down 2 minutes from the previous forecast.
Looking ahead to 2020, the average daily time on Facebook will drop to 37 minutes.
eMarketer principal analyst, Debra Aho Williamson, speaks on this updated forecast:
“Facebook’s continued loss of younger adult users, along with its focus on downranking clickbait posts and videos in favor of those that create ‘time well spent,’ resulted in less daily time spent on the platform in 2018 than we had previously expected.
Less time spent on Facebook translates into fewer chances for marketers to reach the network’s users.”
Time will tell if Facebook makes any changes to address the fact that people are spending less time on its network.
