Over the last few months, there is a massive spike in the overall Internet and mobile apps’ usage. Various countries have noticed a huge upsurge in global screen time consumption during the lockdown phase.
The COVID-19 pandemic puts parts of the world under lockdown. Everyone is now at home and socially isolated. It naturally leads us to incessant binge-watching and using addictive apps all day.
Right from China to Europe every country noticed the increased device usage. Now when India is under lockdown for another 3 weeks, the bandwidth consumption has already jumped up by 10%.
As per the US-based analytics platform SimilarWeb, globally established large social media platforms like TikTok and PUBG and other trending games witnessed a 50-80% increase in active users during the lockdown mode.
Why Does The Usage Of Mobile Internet Increase?
Social isolation pushes more and more people to virtually engage in various social media platforms. People started using smartphone applications for everything. Everything looks quick and safe with mobile apps. From video-calls to studies and from binge-watching web series to gaming we use apps for every purpose.
The video calling app Houseparty and Zoom saw the highest spikes in fresh user installs, in the last few days. Monthly downloads of Zoom applications have increased 17 fold from 500,000 in February to over 8.7 million in March. (As schools and academic centers also use this application to conduct classes)
All the entertainment apps, including games, are also in the same line. People have more time in hand and no outside activities to get entertained. So they solely depend on TV and cell phones for fun. Specifically, smartphones, as comparatively it’s handy and easy to use.
What Is The Latest Online Search Trend?
According to the latest online keyword search trends consumers over the last three months are searching for mobile games more than Maggi! “Mobile”, Laptop games”, “apps “, movies” earphones” and “personal care” are a few latest words with a high volume of search.
The post lockdown mode will also come with social distancing. Seeing the effects of Coronavirus, it seems the social distancing will be a long-term phenomenon. This is again a sign that shows the possible increase in the consumption of new apps and games by both existing and new users.
Nimisha Jain, MD at Boston Consulting Group and in charge of consumer insights center states “The whole digital adoption of services by consumers has been a secular trend for the last 5 years. But the lockdown is going to make a step-change and significantly accelerate the trend by 3-5 years.”
However, this increased screen time also increases parental worries. Various cybercriminals and online predators might risk kids’ virtual life. With this, there is also a huge download of parental control apps globally. Parents use various screen time control tools to restrict kids’ excessive device usage.
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