Thanksgiving is becoming an extremely popular day for mobile users as records continue to be broken while people are with their family enjoying their large meals. Instagram recently announced that they had their best day yet again on Thanksgiving but unfortunately they didn’t release any numbers around usage or posts. According to mobile analytic company Flurry Thanksgiving was a huge day for mobile applications as a whole. Americans initiated around 1.3 billion app sessions this year which is a 68 percent jump over last year.

While the selection of applications launched varied greatly, the big winners this year were music, video and photo applications all of which were up by 50 percent this year. These applications all make sense as people likely played music to entertain guests and the video and photo applications were used to capture the memories being created. Games jumped up around 35 percent and business, education, fitness, news and travel apps all dropped around 20 percent.

“App usage overall in the U.S. spiked by 25% on Thanksgiving compared to the previous Thursday, and not just as a result of shopping app use. The overall pattern of app usage over the Thanksgiving weekend demonstrates that smartphones and tablets have become the first truly personal computers, changing their function as we change our routines.”  – Flurry data scientist Mary Ellen Gordon

The usage has tripled since 2011, and will likely only continue to rise each year as more users ditch their flip phones in favor of a smartphone. With the wide selection of applications available, and our devices ability to just suck us in it is no surprise that people continue to use their devices even on holidays.