Social media calculator: How much of your life is spent on social media?
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xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogleAdd Al Jazeera on GoogleinfoBy Marium Ali and Amr AlkazazPublished On 30 Jun 202630 Jun 2026Every year on June 30, people around the world mark Social Media Day, a date set by the digital-media website Mashable in 2010 to recognise the growing role of these platforms in global communication.
Now, 16 years later, social media is no longer just a space for conversation. It is a basic part of everyday life for more than two-thirds of the world’s population. According to the DataReportal Digital 2026 Global Overview Report, the number of social media users has reached 5.66 billion – equivalent to more than 68 percent of the world’s population.
The number of social media users has grown steadily from fewer than 500 million in 2005 to 2.27 billion in 2015 and 5.66 billion in 2025, largely driven by the spread of affordable smartphones and expanding internet access. In the box below, enter how long you spend on each social media app on an average day. We’ll add it up across a week, month, year and decade, then show it against a lifetime.
According to DataReportal, the average active user spends 18 hours and 36 minutes per week on social media, or roughly two hours and 39 minutes every day. Compounded over a year, that adds up to more than 40 full days spent on these platforms. Global social media usage is widely adopted, averaging 68 percent, with particularly high rates across Europe and North America.
At 88.1 percent, East Asia has the highest ratio of social media usage relative to the total population, followed by 79 percent in Northern Europe, 77.7 percent in Western Europe and 74 percent in North America. By contrast, Central Africa has the lowest social media usage at 12.1 percent, followed by East Africa at 12.6 percent and West Africa at 19 percent, according to DataReportal.
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