Marketing budgets get argued about with numbers, so here are the social media statistics we point clients to most often: how much time people spend on social media, how many adults use it, and how engagement differs by platform. Each figure carries its year and source. We keep the baselines because the trend matters as much as the latest number, and we add new data points as reputable sources publish them.
Time Spent on Social Media
In 2015, people aged 16 to 64 reported spending an average of 111 minutes a day on social media. By 2020 that had risen to 145 minutes, about two and a half hours, which adds up to roughly one waking day every week. The jump between 2019 and 2020 was smaller than many expected, which says more about how much time we were already spending in 2019 than about the pandemic year.
Source: Hootsuite / We Are Social, Digital 2020.
How Many Adults Use Social Media
The 2015 Pew Research benchmark put adult social media use at 65 percent, up from 7 percent a decade earlier, and adoption has kept climbing since; in Canada the large majority of adults with internet access now use at least one platform. The practical point for a business is that the question is no longer whether your customers are on social media, but which platforms they use and what they do there.
Source: Pew Research Center, Social Media Usage 2005–2015.
Instagram Stories
Half of active Instagram users watch and engage with Stories, and most users say they see Stories from the brands they follow more often than regular feed posts. If your business is not using Stories, it is missing the most-seen surface on the platform. Our guide to Instagram stickers covers how to make them interactive.
Source: Sprout Social, Social Media Statistics.
Engagement Rates by Platform
Across all industries, Instagram delivers the highest engagement per post by a wide margin. Facebook and X engagement per post has been flat for years, and Instagram’s own rate slipped from 1.60 percent to 1.22 percent between 2019 and 2020 as the algorithm changed. For what counts as a good rate on Facebook specifically, see what is a good Facebook engagement rate.
Source: Rival IQ, Social Media Industry Benchmark Report.
Consumer Behaviour After Following a Brand
Following a brand is the start of a relationship, not the end. Consumers who follow a brand go on to visit its website, buy from it, recommend it and choose it over competitors at measurably higher rates. A good social media programme puts you in front of your target customers, builds connections and establishes trust, and that is what turns into sales.
Source: Sprout Social, Social Media Statistics.
What the Numbers Mean for Your Budget
Time on platform keeps rising, adoption is near-universal among adults, and engagement is concentrated on Instagram and in Stories. For most small businesses that argues for a consistent organic presence on one or two platforms, paid reach on Facebook and Instagram where organic reach has fallen, and measurement against leads rather than likes. Our social media marketing service is built around exactly that.
