An increase in mobile devices is driving the use of social media by consumers, according to a report published by Nielsen and NM Incite.
While the report found that the computer remains as the predominant device for social media access, consumers’ time spent with social media on mobile apps and the mobile web has increased 63 percent in 2012, compared to the same period last year.
Fully 43 percent of social media users said they access their social media account via their smartphone, while 16 percent said they used a tablet.
Overall consumers continued to spend more time on social networks than
on any other category of sites—roughly 20 percent of their total time online via personal computer (PC), and 30 percent of total time online via mobile. Additionally, total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PCs and mobile devices increased 37 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012, compared to 88 billion in July 2011.
Facebook remains the most-visited social network in the United States via PC (152.2 million visitors), mobile apps (78.4 million users) and mobile web (74.3 million visitors), and is multiple times the size of the next largest social site across each platform. The report found that Facebook is also the top U.S. web brand in terms of time spent, as some 17 percent of time spent online via personal computer is on Facebook.