Enhancing the Facebook experience across all mobile device types has become a major focus for a while now, and despite the platform’s past lackluster efforts to try and create an engaging mobile experience, a detailed study reveals that a lot of users check their accounts on-the-go, anyway.
Together with IDC, Facebook analyzed daily and weekly mobile activity for smartphone users to better understand how they use their devices to keep up with the social networking site, along with other apps that are geared toward communication. According to the report, half of the total U.S. population uses smartphones, and the services that are most used are “texting or messaging, talking on the phone, and direct messaging via Facebook.”
A total of 7,446 mobile users – iOS and Android devices combined – ranging between 18 to 24 years of age comprised the test group, and results show that 70 percent of them use Facebook Mobile, with 61 percent using it on a daily basis.
The study breaks down the respondents’ social activity on mobile, and results show that a lot of them use their phones to peruse their News Feeds, comment on updates, post statuses, check out other people’s Timelines, and send private messages directly to their friends. 16 percent use Facebook to play games daily and 7 percent search for new apps to install, two activities the study predicts will increase through the course of the year “as users seek simpler, more direct ways to find great applications and experiences.”
Facebook Mobile addiction can certainly be correlated with how much people are attached to their smartphones – 62 percent of all respondents immediately grab their phone after waking up. Email is the most popular smartphone activity among the users, followed by browsing the Web and Facebook, respectively. Are you running errands, shopping, cooking, working out, attending a meeting or a class, out for a meal, at a live event, or at the movies? Then, like the test group, you’re most probably also on your phone – checking Facebook – which can pretty much be considered an extra limb, since 79 percent of the respondents have their phones within reach “all but up to two hours of their waking day.”
The study also breaks down the amount of time people use the social networking site, and of all the possible social activities users can engage in on their phones, Facebook reigns supreme, taking up 1 out of every 4 minutes. Why do we visit Facebook so much? According to 25 percent of the test group, they sneak a peak on their News Feed out of sheer curiosity – the same reason they check Instagram on a regular basis.
