How Much Daily Activity on the Facebook App Consumes Data Traffic on Smartphones?

Many of us use the Facebook application on smartphones, and surfing it is often part of our daily routine. Facebook’s creators have perfected the art of getting users addicted to browsing through their timelines, which is one of the reasons why it is one of the most widely used programs on the market. As with other social networks, as soon as you open Facebook, you immediately receive a large number of various content pieces in the form of comments, posts, videos, or photos of your friends and followers. At that moment, you automatically start scrolling and it’s very difficult to “unstick” yourself from your smartphone.

Each user has their habits, but we can certainly confirm that we browse Facebook several times a day. You’re doing the same, there’s no doubt. The only question that remains is how much daily activities on the Facebook application consume data traffic on smartphones. When conducting this test, several applications were used to monitor the consumption of data traffic, and in all of them, the initial value was canceled and set to zero.

The results showed that spending 5 minutes on the Facebook application results in a data traffic consumption of approximately 40 megabytes. If we do further calculations with this value, we arrive at the following results:

• 5 minutes – 40 megabytes;
• 15 minutes – 120 megabytes;
• 30 minutes – 240 megabytes;
• 45 minutes – 360 megabytes;
• 1 hour – 480 megabytes.

From the numbers above you can see that 1 hour of continuous use of the Facebook application on your smartphone could consume about half a gigabyte of data traffic. If you do this every day for a whole week, that’s a consumption of 3.5 gigabytes. If you combine the use of the Facebook application with other social networks that are even more demanding in terms of data traffic consumption (such as Instagram), or other demanding apps you use as a pastime, such as those presented on this site, it may happen that you very easily reach the limit of your tariff package.

Detailed Information on Facebook’s Excessive Data Usage

What makes Facebook use so much data, then? Short answer: As Facebook’s default option is set to display photographs at the best resolution possible, it frequently consumes a lot of data. Regardless of size, every video on your timeline will also automatically start playing in high HD.

If you use mobile data to access the internet, Facebook is probably one of the most frequent users every time you look at your data usage statistics. Although there are numerous contributing elements, including the service provider and the settings on your device, the following are unquestionably the key causes:

• Facebook automatically runs all videos in HD, which consumes data.
• Facebook processes and uploads all of your media in the maximum resolution that your device can handle for your timeline.

Facebook created an accessible Facebook style for all Android users that uses minimal data as a response to complaints from consumers regarding their high data usage.

You can select the “Text only” mode after deciding to use this function, which prevents you from viewing videos and photos but allows you to see all words and captions. All you have to do to get back to normal if you become weary of only seeing the texts is click the “View images” button in the top right corner of your screen.

How to Reduce the Consumption of Data Traffic as a Facebook User?

There’s a setting change option inside the Facebook app itself if the statistics we’ve provided worry you. Modifying the aforementioned settings will save data traffic, stop clips from starting automatically, and scale down videos’ resolution.

The Facebook application’s data traffic parameters can be modified as follows:

• Launch Facebook and select the “Menu” option in the top-right corner;
• Tap on “Settings & Privacy” after scrolling down;
• Choose “Settings” from the menu bar, followed by “Media content”;
• Turn on “Data saving”, which can help you save up to 40% on data traffic;
• Turn on “Never autoplay videos”;
• An additional possibility is to mark the option “Only via Wi-Fi connection”, which will automatically play video content only when you use Wi-Fi.

You’ll significantly reduce the amount of data traffic on your smartphone by making these modest but important modifications.

You can use the “Settings” menu option “Your time on Facebook” to better manage how much time you spend using the Facebook application. Here, you can see your daily and weekly activity levels. Using the Facebook Lite app is your final choice for realizing data traffic savings.

For those who are unaware, the Facebook Lite app is quite similar to the standard Facebook app, with a few exceptions:

• Only the essential Facebook features are included.
• It consumes less data and occupies less space on smartphones.
• It works flawlessly on all networks, even 2G.
• It installs more quickly and loads the Facebook home screen more quickly.
• It’s compatible with the overwhelming bulk of iOS and Android phones.

You can significantly reduce data usage by installing the Facebook Lite app and downloading it.