Here's a number worth sitting with: the average person currently spends approximately 2 hours and 21 minutes per day on social media, according to DataReportal's 2025 global research. That's down fractionally from 2024, but it's still a number that compounds in ways most people haven't stopped to calculate.
Multiply it out across a lifetime, and it becomes something else entirely.
Six years. For context, that's longer than most people spend eating across their entire lifetime. It's roughly equal to the time the average person spends commuting over a 40-year career. And for teenagers — who average closer to 4 hours and 48 minutes a day in the US — the lifetime total climbs past 13 years.
These aren't abstract statistics anymore. In March 2026, a California jury made them feel very concrete indeed.
The verdict that changed everything
On 25 March 2026, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design of their platforms — delivering what legal observers described as a landmark moment in tech accountability.
The jury concluded that Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube were deliberately built to be addictive, and that the companies' executives knew their platforms were harming young users while failing to adequately warn them. The jury awarded $6 million in damages — $3 million compensatory, $3 million punitive — with Meta held responsible for 70% of the harm.
The case, brought on behalf of a plaintiff identified by her initials K.G.M., centred not on the content people see on social media, but on how the platforms were engineered — the endless scroll, the notification systems, the algorithmic reinforcement loops. As plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier told the jury: "How do you make a child never put down the phone? That's called the engineering of addiction."
Internal Meta documents presented at trial included a memo stating "If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens," and data showing 11-year-olds were four times as likely to return to Instagram compared with competing apps — despite the platform's minimum age being 13. Mark Zuckerberg testified in person, becoming the first Meta CEO to face a jury in such a proceeding.
The case has been compared to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, which forced an entire industry to stop targeting children. There are currently more than 2,300 similar cases active in US courts.
How the time breaks down by platform
Not all social media time is equal. Different platforms capture attention in different ways — and for very different durations.
| Platform | Avg. daily time (global) | Lifetime equivalent* |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok | 54–59 min/day | 2.0–2.2 years |
| YouTube | 49–60 min/day | 1.8–2.2 years |
| 32–33 min/day | 1.2 years | |
| 31–32 min/day | 1.15 years | |
| 34 min/day | 1.25 years | |
| X (Twitter) | 32 min/day | 1.2 years |
*Lifetime equivalent calculated based on 46 remaining years from age 32. Sources: DataReportal, DemandSage, Hootsuite 2024–2025.
The average user doesn't just use one platform — DataReportal finds the typical person engages with around 6.83 different platforms each month. The cumulative total across all platforms is what produces that 6+ year lifetime figure.
How it compares to other things you value
The lifetime numbers become most striking when placed alongside other ways people spend their time. The average person will spend:
- Around 26 years sleeping
- Around 13 years working
- Around 6+ years on social media — comparable to their entire working career in some countries
- Around 4 years eating
- Around 1.5 years exercising (if they hit recommended guidelines — most don't)
Social media now sits third on the lifetime allocation list for many people — behind only sleep and work. Most people didn't consciously choose for it to be that way.
The platforms were designed to produce exactly this outcome. That's no longer a theory. It's what courts are now finding as fact — that the time you spend on social media is, at least in part, the result of deliberate engineering decisions made to maximise engagement at the expense of user wellbeing.
The geography of social media time
Social media usage varies enormously by country — more than most people realise. In some countries, social media occupies an extraordinary proportion of waking hours.
| Country | Daily average | Lifetime equivalent* |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 3h 49m | 10.4 years |
| South Africa | 3h 41m | 10.0 years |
| Philippines | 3h 34m | 9.7 years |
| Global average | 2h 21m | 6.3 years |
| United States | 2h 16m | 6.2 years |
| United Kingdom | ~1h 50m | 5.0 years |
| Japan | 53 min | 2.4 years |
*Based on 46 remaining years from age 32. Sources: DataReportal 2024–2025, We Are Social.
The Japanese figure is striking — at under an hour a day, Japanese internet users spend less than half the global average on social media. The reasons are complex and culturally specific, but the comparison raises an obvious question: what are people doing with that time instead?
What the research says about the effect on wellbeing
The legal cases have drawn heavily on a body of research linking heavy social media use — particularly among young people — with measurable declines in mental health. Some key findings from the research literature:
- In 2025, 68% of users aged 13–24 reported that social media negatively impacts their mental wellbeing at least once a week.
- The US Surgeon General called in 2024 for warning labels on social media platforms — comparable to those on cigarette packets — citing addiction risks and mental health harms.
- Research published in peer-reviewed journals has documented the role of dopamine pathway activation in social media use, identifying patterns consistent with other recognised forms of behavioural addiction.
- Gen Z users check social media over 17 times per day — double the frequency of Gen X — with average TikTok sessions now exceeding 11 minutes.
It's worth being clear that the research picture is not entirely one-sided. Some studies find positive effects of social media use — connection, community, access to information. The harms appear most pronounced at high usage levels and among younger users, particularly in relation to appearance-based platforms like Instagram.
The concern isn't social media itself. It's the gap between the amount of time people intend to spend on it and the amount they actually do — a gap that the platforms' own design has been found, in court, to deliberately widen.
What's changing legally and legislatively
The March 2026 verdict is part of a broader shift in how governments and courts are treating social media platforms:
- California's Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act (SB 976) — upheld by the Ninth Circuit in September 2025 — prohibits platforms from providing "addictive feeds" to minors without parental consent.
- 42 US states and over 140 school districts have filed lawsuits against Meta and other platforms.
- The US Department of Justice sued TikTok in August 2024 for illegally collecting data from children under 13.
- Florida, Utah, and Virginia have all passed or attempted legislation restricting social media access for under-16s.
The legal landscape around social media is shifting faster than at any point since these platforms launched. Whether that translates into meaningful changes to how the platforms are designed remains to be seen.
What this means for your time
None of this is an argument for deleting your accounts. Social media is woven into how people communicate, work, and stay informed — and for many people it provides genuine connection and value.
The more useful question is the same one a time audit always leads back to: is this how much you'd consciously choose to spend?
For most people, the answer is no. Studies consistently show that people underestimate their social media usage by 30–50%. The gap between how long people think they're scrolling and how long they actually are is itself a product of design — the platforms work hard to make time feel shorter than it is.
Knowing the lifetime number — 6 years, or 13 for a teenager — doesn't mean you need to quit. But it does make the trade-off explicit in a way that the next notification never will.
See your personal social media projection
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Sources: DataReportal Digital 2025 Report; We Are Social Global Digital Report 2025; DemandSage Social Media Statistics 2026; NBC News coverage of KGM v. Meta & YouTube verdict, March 2026; NPR coverage of the social media addiction trial; King Law Social Media Addiction Lawsuit tracker; US Surgeon General's Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, 2024; Ninth Circuit ruling on California SB 976, September 2025.