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Earlier this year, a US-based global agency, We Are Social, and social media management platform Hootsuite published their Global Digital Yearbook for 2019. The results? A deep dive into the world’s digital habits and the rather expected realisation that humans indeed spend huge chunks of time online.

South Africans spend an average of eight hours and 25 minutes online every day ( via any device) – according to the Global Digital Yearbook 2019 – compared to a worldwide average of six hours and 42 minutes; that number places us in the sixth position, just behind Indonesia and Columbia and way ahead of the US.

Interestingly, globally the use of the Internet has decreased by 1.7% between 2018 and 2019, although not in our country.

South African Internet users also spend an average of two hours 48 minutes on social media (compared to a worldwide average of two hours 16 minutes), with an overwhelming preference for Whatsapp (90% of Internet users), YouTube (84%) and Facebook (82%).