UK Smartphone Owners Most Active On Social Media Globally

The UK is the place where smartphone owners are staying the longest on social networking sites via their devices, even when compared to countries like China, Japan and the US.

I found out about this interesting fact whilst reading a report from measurement services provider Arbitron Mobile, which compared the levels of social media use via smartphones in seven markets, namely the UK, the US, Indonesia, Japan, France, Germany and China. According to the results, smartphone users in the UK spend a total of 819 minutes a month on social media, which is more than the 670 minutes registered in the US and 496 minutes in Japan. Arbitron noted that despite being the country that brought social media to the world, the US lags nearly two hours behind British users in terms of social media usage and more than half an hour as far as social web access goes.

Smartphone users in both countries, however, seem to have adopted similar ways to access social websites in terms of the usage of dedicated apps and mobile web browsers, with 81%-87% relying on these channels to log on to social networking hubs via their devices. They also spend more time on social media through an app rather than a browser.

Users in Germany and France who own a smartphone spend considerably less time on tweeting, posting updates and sharing links on social websites, designating 445 minutes and 434 minutes a month on such activities, respectively.

As for the social media channels that smartphone users like the most, Facebook and Twitter emerged as the most popular apps in six out of seven countries.