India is currently under a 21-day lockdown due to the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic and it is now highly probable that the lockdown will be extended. Indians are locked up inside their homes, often with several family members sharing a small space.
While venturing outdoors has been prohibited strictly and all public places such as malls, theatres and restaurants have been closed down- people are relying a great degree on their smartphones and social media to keep themselves entertained through the quarantine phase.
Social media usage has indeed gone up to a great extent in the lockdown phase.
The country went on a total lockdown on March 24 and ever since then platforms like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have recorded exceptional viewing time. Moreover, many live video streaming applications have also seen their graphs growing as the days pass.
The biggest gainers in this context have been applications such as live.me and Bigo. Both these apps have about 20 million users each. Tiktok and Instagram were also the top used applications and the time that people spent using them was amplified by 59% to 53% respectively.
Kalagato is an organisation that works towards quantification of data with regard to the amount of time users spend on social media and helps trace user behaviour across platforms.
These important revelations about the increase in popularity of popular online applications has been carried out by Kalagato.
Perhaps this rapid increase can be attributed to the fact that now most people are spending their time at home and the need for social distancing has encouraged people to spend more time using their mobile phones and thereby making use of these applications.
People’s usage of these platforms also shows that a large section of users are using this medium as an easy solution to kill time or to get entertained in the absence of other exciting options such as shopping or watching a film at the theatres.
The share of daily active users increased most for a platform such as Twitter. This was possibly due to the fact that most people were turning to it for news amidst a thinning availability of newspapers and in search of latest updates.
Platforms such as Facebook or Instagram didn’t show drastic increase in usage because their fan base is already among the greatest. However, it is TikTok that has gained immense popularity in recent months and the lockdown has certainly proven beneficial for he designers of this app. But despite its widespread usage, what we must realise is that TikTok is also a den of fake news. Recently, two families from rural India ended up in hospital recently after they followed a “home remedy” for coronavirus that they had seen on TikTok.
An analysis shows that TikTok also had an important role to play in spreading communal hatred, misinformation against the Muslims and some videos on the platform have even gone on to say that the disease doesn’t affect the community.
The government has urged these platforms to check the authenticity of the information that people put out on them.
