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There is no bigger global disruptor in recent history than the onset of internet and social media. As little as 20 years ago, it wasn’t in anyone’s imagination that we will be doing banking, shopping, watching TV and basically everything through our smartphones, using our mobile data. It has literally changed our daily lives, and we even must exert effort to “detox” and stay away from it because… it’s that hard. It’s just so ingrained in most of our daily tasks.
For 2018, more and more people went online. According to Hootsuite and We Are Social’s annual digital report, “More than 360 million people came online for the first time, at an average rate of more than 1 million new users each day. 57 percent of the world’s population is now connected to the internet, with trends indicating that all the original ‘Next Billion Users’ are now online.”
The report adds that the average internet user now spends more than 6½ hours online each day, meaning that the world’s digital community will spend a combined total of more than 1.2 billion years using the internet in 2019 — majority of it using social media. The number of social media users around the world has increased by more than 280 million since January 2018.
So, what about the Philippines?
Filipinos are online. All the Time.
Here in the Philippines, that global trend is very much reflected. Our total population currently stands at 107.3 Million, and according to data, there are 124.2 Million mobile subscriptions which accounts for 116% of the population. Our internet penetration is at 71% (76 Million) which is higher than the Southeast Asian average of 63%. There is an equal number of active social media users, and 67% of the population use social media through their phones (72 Million).
The amount of time we spend online is also staggering. The daily average of a Filipino is at 10 hours and 2 minutes, which is the highest in the world. Last year, it was at 9 hours and 29 minutes.
It’s not that hard to see — you only need to look around in the office, the malls and even when you walk down the street. People are hunched over the phones, scrolling endlessly. It’s so common to see a person just smiling while using their phones, presumably chatting with someone on FB messenger, which is the top choice of Filipinos for mobile communication.
The annual digital growth in the country is also accelerating. From January 2018 to January 2019, an additional four million Filipinos availed of a mobile subscription while an additional NINE MILLION became internet users. When you put that into context, there were two million Filipinos born in 2019, which means there are more new internet users than actual human beings being born in the country. Wow!
Filipinos are the top social media users in the world. Bar none.
And here’s the thing: if you couple the fact that a very big part of our population are internet users and that most of those are social media users, it’s not hard to arrive at the data that we are in fact the top social media users in the world.
For the fourth straight year, the Philippines is ranked #1 in terms of social media use, averaging 4 hours and 12 minutes daily which is a big jump from last year’s average of 3 hours and 57 minutes. For comparison, the global average is 2 hours and 16 minutes — Filipinos use social media almost double that time. Other top usages are average daily TV viewing time (broadcast streaming on demand) which is at 3 hours and 33 minutes, and then average daily time streaming music, currently at 2 hours and 6 minutes.
What does this mean for real estate and e-commerce?
To state the obvious, real estate brokers much like other sales roles, now must make use of these trends to their advantage. While property transactions are closed out mostly offline, sourcing property options and potential buyers start online which now makes online listings necessary. You can check out ways real estate brokers can harness social media, also how to gain social media engagement as a real estate agent.
