More Than Half of US Social Network Users Will Be Mobile-Only in 2019

Fewer people in the US are accessing social networking sites via computers, with the majority of users now exclusively on mobile devices. We forecast that 51.7% of US social network users will be mobile-only in 2019.

What’s causing this trend?

As smartphone use grows, fewer Americans are using desktops and laptops to access the internet. The number of US smartphone users will reach 232.8 million in 2019, surpassing desktop/laptop internet users (228.9 million) for the first time. And the number of those who access the internet exclusively on a mobile device will grow by 10.6%, reaching 55.1 million users.

But social network users have been largely mobile-exclusive for years. While they may use computers for school or work activities, their social media use is contained to tablets and phones.

We expect that social network users on desktops/laptops will decrease by 1.7 million in 2019.

Looking at individual platforms, the majority of Facebook’s US users have been mobile-only since 2016. This year, we expect that 66.3% of them will access the platform exclusively on a mobile device. Twitter will also continue to have a healthy share of mobile-only users at 22.9 million, or 43.1% of its US users.

Then there are the networks that are mobile-only themselves. Instagram, which can be accessed via desktop browsers but lacks essential features like the ability to post content, is the second-most-popular network in the country, with 106.7 million users. And Snapchat, another network that’s essentially mobile-only, will have 77.5 million US users this year.

Courtesy of eMarketer