Where does screen time go?
So where did all that screen time go? Gaming’s decline has coincided with a significant increase in rival entertainment platforms competing for the same amount of time in the day. According to Ball’s data from Emarketer, Americans are now spending 122 million more hours per day on social media than in 2020/2021, with TikTok alone accounting for 39 million of the increased daily time compared to post-pandemic normalization levels. Meanwhile, mobile game installs in the US have hit a 12-year low, and time spent playing mobile games is decreasing.
Consumer spending on platforms like OnlyFans also exploded during the same period. Americans will spend approximately $5 billion on OnlyFans in 2025, up from $215 million in 2019, an increase of more than 23x. Total spending on OnlyFans, online sports betting, and iGaming has increased from $1.2 billion to $32.8 billion since 2019. This $31.6 billion increase dwarfs the $12.9 billion increase in video game spending over the same period. Quarterly installs of consumer AI apps will jump from about 100 million to nearly 1 billion starting in 2023. The prediction market, which had virtually no activity until 2024, has exploded, with users placing 1.5 million bets per day by Q4 2025. Total gaming revenue for online sports betting quadrupled from $17.6 billion in 2019 to $69.7 billion in 2025.
The gaming industry is in crisis. According to an Ipsos study commissioned for Ball’s report, American men between the ages of 18 and 34 are 1.4 to 2.0 times more likely to play video games than the average adult, but they also play cryptocurrencies. They are up to 3.6 times more likely to make a trade, 3.3 times more likely to place a sports bet, 3.1 times more likely to use prediction markets, 3.0 times more likely to use OnlyFans, and 2.0 to 2.4 times more likely to use OnlyFans. Using AI tools, this demographic becomes the epicenter of high-profile wars.
As these rival apps and platforms compete for the same amount of time and dollars, gamers face a barrage of new, disruptive, and, as Ball describes it, irresistible notifications for these alternatives.
