Facebook has always worked hard to be additive among its users, that is, the more hours you spend on the social network, the better, whether it is to report your status, message your friends or your family, or gossip about what is happening around you. .
Getting stuck in time is the purpose of facebookcreating a constant stream of comments, photos, videos, and polls that keep you from putting your phone down and getting back to your normal life.
But how much does it cost you in terms of mobile data consumption when you use your mobile away from home or away from a Wi-Fi wireless network? We will analyze the data consumption carried out by the mobile application and what this may mean per day and per month.
How much data does Facebook use?
To get valid numbers, we zeroed the data usage counter on our test phone with a dedicated monitoring app and it told us what it’s like to spend X minutes using the social network. Here are the results:
- 5 minutes: 40 MB
- 15 minutes: 120 MB
- 30 minutes: 240 MB
- 45 minutes: 360 MB
- 1 hour: 480 MB
As you can see, that means one hour a day of use facebook on your phone Smart could cost you around half a gigabyte of data. For a week, this equates to around 3.5 GB (500 x 7), and for a month, it will reach the value of 14 GB.
Combine that with the slightly higher numbers we found in a similar test of how much data Instagram uses and we could easily hit your data plan limit just by using these two apps.
How to reduce the consumption of data used by Facebook
If you find the numbers described above a bit high, there are several ways to lower them, including preventing videos from autoplaying and lowering their resolution so they use less data.
Here’s how to find your mobile data usage settings:
- Open the Facebook app and tap the Menu icon located in the lower right corner.
- Scroll down and select “Settings and privacy”.
- Scroll down again and tap “Cellular Data Usage”.
- You can now choose if you want to watch lower resolution videos and when autoplay works.
Of course, another easy way to reduce the amount of data Facebook uses is to only access the app when you’re on Wi-Fi, as that won’t use any of your data plans.
If your current contract is too restrictive or associated with a fixed data plan, try consulting our ranking of the best offers from telephone operators in Europe of the year to see if you can benefit from migrating to one of them.
In case you go or travel abroad, you must also take into account the country of destination and if there is any type of agreement with the operators of this country. Take a look at the article on what roaming do Spanish mobile operators offer.
