The app has overtaken the internet

Consumers now spend more time consuming digital content via smartphone and tablet apps than they do via surfing the web -- either on a handset or on the desktop.

The average US smartphone user now spends 88% of his or her time when using a handset within an app and just 12% using the web browser. ComScore's latest report into US mobile app use also reveals that 60% of all media consumption is mobile -- 52% via apps and 8% via the browser -- with desktops making up the remaining 40%.

Over half of all US consumers access their smartphone's apps every single day of the month, and, while more than one third of all smartphone owners download at least one new app a month, 42% of all app time spent is within that person's favorite app. In fact, three out of every four smartphone app minutes is spent within one of four apps.

ComScore's data shows that that favorite app is Facebook. No matter what the consumer's age, the app is the most popular in terms of both audience reach and the time spent using it. And the majority of the remaining app time is focused primarily on gaming and radio.

Social networking across all apps, from the aforementioned Facebook to Twitter and beyond, accounts for 25% of monthly app time, while games grab 16% of users' time, followed by radio services such as Pandora (8%). Multimedia and retail apps both account for 5% of app time and instant messaging apps take up a further 4% of smartphone owners' time.

Breaking the figures down into individual titles across different age groups, whether a smartphone owner is 18 or 55+ Facebook is the number-one destination, while for 18-to-24-year-olds, Pandora is second (9.1% of time spent), followed by Instagram (6.6%) and YouTube (5.2%), with Snapchat (3.4%) rounding out the top five.

For 25-to-34-year-olds, Pandora is also the second most used app (7.4%), followed by YouTube (3.6%), Instagram (2.7%) and Netflix (2.6%).

The 35-to 54-year-old crowd also goes for Pandora (4.1%), followed by Facebook Messenger (3.6%), YouTube (2.5%) and Netflix (1.5%).

Meanwhile for the 55+ age group, Facebook messenger is second (4%), followed by Pandora Radio (2.5%), YouTube (1.6%) and Yahoo Mail (1.5%).