NEW YORK—The latest eMarketer forecast shows that U.S. social network users will spend slightly less time on social platforms in 2021 than they did in 2020, while time spent among UK users will remain relatively stable. One possible factor in the way people use social networks such as Facebook and Twitter may have to do with the way the networks are now dealing with news and politics, according to eMarketer.

Both platforms made high-profile moves in this year’s first quarter to limit news and politics, including banning or suspending former U.S. President Donald Trump’s accounts.

Facebook also temporarily pulled all news content from its platform in Australia, and it began reducing the amount of political content on its News Feed in some countries.

In terms of other changes to social network features in the first quarter, Twitter expanded its social audio feature, Twitter Spaces, to Android users, beating Clubhouse to the punch. Facebook started a test to bring Instagram’s Reels to the News Feed. And Instagram introduced Live Rooms, which increased the maximum number of hosts on its live video product from two to four. Snapchat rolled out its TikTok-like Spotlight feed to more countries.

In addition, there were some major monetization product and ad targeting changes. Facebook said it would comply with the upcoming changes to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) in iOS 14, but with its own twist. Snapchat struck a new deal with Gannett that shows it’s going after local ad dollars. Instagram partnered with Shopify to ease e-commerce transactions on its site.

Also, Twitter started exploring subscriptions and shoppable tweets, while continuing to work on its direct-response offerings.

The key stat, though, according to eMarketer: With the exception of Snapchat, daily time spent among U.S. adult users of every social network will dip in 2021 but remain higher than in 2019, before the pandemic took hold.

eMarketer’s new social media forecast is available to order here.

The report explores key developments for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, as well as the latest forecasts for U.S. and U.K. time spent with social networks. It also includes highlights from a new forecast for social network ad revenues.