Average time spent daily on a smartphone in the United States 2021

According to a survey conducted in February 2021, nearly half of the respondents stated that on average they spent five to six hours on their phone on a daily basis, not including work-related smartphone use. A further 22 percent of respondents said that they spent three to four hours on average on their phone daily. Just five percent of the surveyed users said they spent less than an hour a day on their smartphone. As of the end of 2020, 18 percent of respondents reported not limiting their use of mobile apps or services at all.

Mobile social in the United States

Between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, users in the United States spent more than 37 minutes daily on social media apps. Traditional social media products as Facebook and Instagram still manage to engage larger online audiences, however mobile-first social video platform TikTok won the favor of the younger segments of the country’s digital population. As video becomes the industry-favorite format for social media, the user base of platforms like Snapchat and TikTok is expected to keep growing, especially among Gen Z users in the country.

Ads in apps: U.S. users’ opinion of in-app advertising

Despite the growing popularity of mobile services on subscription, adding ads to the mobile app experience remains the most common monetization method among U.S. publishers. As of September 2021, more than three users in 10 agreed that having mobile apps with ads was preferable to paying for downloads, while only eight percent disagreed. Approximately 32 percent of users were inclined to visit the brand’s website after seeing relevant in-app advertising, and 11 percent reported purchasing the advertised product.