7 out of every 10 minutes on mobile in 2021 was spent in Social and Photo & Video apps

According to App Annie, 7 out of every 10 minutes on mobile devices in 2021 were spent on Social and Photo & Video apps.

Of the 950 billion hours spent on Android devices in the fourth quarter of 2021, 650 were spent on social & communication and photo & video applications, per the report. 

Time spent on social apps increased by 35% from Q4 2018 to Q4 2021, from 306 billion hours to 412 billion hours. In the same period, hours spent in Photo and Video apps increased by 90% from 129 billion hours to 244 billion hours.

In 2021, the top app in the global average monthly hours spent per user was TikTok, with 19.6 hours per month worldwide, excluding China. Although this figure is equal to Facebook, TikTok differs from Facebook with the 4.7x growth that it has seen in the last 4 years.

TikTok users spent $2.3 billion in the popular short-video app in 2021, including the iOS version of its Chinese localization Douyin, up 77% YoY from $1.3 billion in 2020.

In 2021, time spent in the top 25 live streaming apps outpaced the social market overall year over year by a factor of 9 — YoY growth of 40% compared to all social apps at 5%.