Media usage in an online minute 2021

A lot of things happen in an internet minute – millions of messages, e-mails and texts are sent, scrolled and uploaded, and hundreds of thousands of hours of content are consumed. In a 2021 internet minute, 452 thousand hours of Netflix content were streamed by users worldwide.

Online media consumption

Media and communications are two big drivers of online activity among the billions of global online users. Due to improvements in digital infrastructure and affordable data plans, digital video streaming is constantly increasing, be it via free video platforms or subscription services. Netflix is one of the most popular video streaming services worldwide, having accumulated over 209 million subscribers as of mid-2021. The company is also working hard to keep up with its users’ voracious appetites: in 2019, the company produced 2,769 hours of original first-run content, up from on 73 hours of original content in 2013.

Messaging apps

Communicating via social media and messaging apps is also a popular online activity. The most-downloaded communication apps in the Google Play Store include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram. When OTT messaging services rose to prominence in the early 2010s, their initial appeal was based on the fact that messaging was free, whereas SMS messages were not. Since then, messaging apps have increased the range of services they offer and the ability to send photos, videos, group chats and free voice calls now the norm.