Consumers in the country spend an average of over 7 hours online every day, the 13th highest in the world
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Published: May 10, 2023 07:14 am
Last updated: Wednesday 10 May 2023 07:18
Dubai-based ML’s day starts with browsing social media. “I have five accounts. One is the public account where I have my family, relatives and acquaintances. The private account is for my friends; my parents don’t know about it. I also have three other accounts – one is for my hobby, another for selling items and a third for posting memes.”
On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates was named the social media capital of the world by a study based on data from the World Population Review. This study showed that the United Arab Emirates has more registered Facebook users than the country’s population.
According to Filipino high school student Annie T, several of her friends have multiple social media accounts for various reasons. “For example, they have an art account to post art, advertise their art for commissions, or view art on their timeline. Then they have a separate account for their fandoms and interests. If you are a fan of something, use this account to interact with people with the same interests and hobbies etc. And finally a personal account.”
The study found that consumers in the UAE spend an average of seven hours and 29 minutes a day online, the 13th highest in the world. Team KT surveyed a wide range of people from all cross-sections about their use of social media
Changing social media landscape
Several members of the younger generation indicated that their interest in older social media platforms like Facebook was waning. “I don’t think any of my friends have a Facebook account,” said Sheza Saleem, a student at the American University of Sharjah. “All my friends are either on TikTok or Snapchat. TikTok is pretty big.” [with everyone]. Many of us are also on the platform called BeReal.”
With BeReal, a photo sharing app that allows users to share their photos just once a day, friends can take live pictures within two minutes. It has no filters and is often referred to as an anti-Instagram app.
Annie said she uses Messenger, Discord and Instagram to keep in touch with her friends. “In Southeast Asian countries, Messenger is the mainstream messaging app we use to keep in touch with family and friends,” she said. “We also chat a lot on Instagram via direct messages. As for other social media platforms, I usually use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.”
professionals
For young PR pro Hollie Singleton, her favorite social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter. “Social media is the ideal place to communicate with friends, get the news, and learn skills like cooking,” she said. “I use Instagram the most, but I also use Snapchat because most of my friends are there.”
Hollie said she maintains both a public and private Instagram account. “The private area is for my photos,” she said. “I take so many photos and wanted a way to post them while my main account has existed for a long time and all my family and friends are logged into it.”
However, for the older generation, Facebook remained the top choice of social media platform. Sana Adam, 58, said most of her friends are on Facebook. “If I post something on Instagram, I probably get about 20 comments,” she said. “If I post the same thing on Facebook, I get about 300 replies. So I know most of my friends are on FB. However, my kids and grandkids are on Instagram, so I’m more active there. You have to keep up with that.” The youngsters.”
