We examine where people spend their time online, analyzing desktop browsing data collected from the National Internet Observatory (NIO). Key findings include:
● A few platforms dominate where we spend our time. The top 10 platforms captured about half (49%) of all online time, with Gmail at number one with 16.4%.
● A tiny number of companies dominate where we spend time. Most user attention is funneled through a handful of corporations. Alphabet (Google’s parent company) alone accounts for 35% of total browsing time in our sample, followed by Meta (8.9%), Microsoft (5.1%), Yahoo (4.3%), and Amazon (3.0%). These five companies capture more than half of all time Americans spend online on desktop.
● Americans spend half their online time on just two things: social media (25.3%) and email (24.9%).
● AI is already bigger than news. Large Language Model (LLM) tools, such as ChatGPT, now account for 2.9% of total online time, while news is only 2.5%.
● The Web is highly age-segregated. Users over 65 spend 36.7% of their online time on email and 14% on Facebook, versus 11% and 2%, respectively, for users under 30. Older people are still using Yahoo and AOL for email (9%, 2%, respectively), both of which barely register among younger users. The oldest cohort spends 4.7% of their time on news sites, far more than the youngest cohort (1.2%). In contrast, users under 30 spend 13% of their time on YouTube, 9% on Google apps (Docs, Drive, Meet, Classroom, and other Google services excluding Gmail, Search, and YouTube), and 3% on ChatGPT, as compared to 6%, 3%, and <1%, respectively, among the oldest cohort.

How to cite this report:
APA (7th ed.) Lazer, D., Ozturan, B., Wilson, C., Choffnes, D., Waldrip, C., Lu, H.-C., & Wihbey, J. (2026, May 12). How Americans spend their time online. Institute for Information, the Internet and Democracy, Northeastern University. https://www.nuinfoinstitute.org/publications/how-americans-spend-their-time-online