To no surprise, a recent Pew Internet report found that the youngest demographic (18-29 year olds) were the most likely to use social networking sites. What is surprising, however, is that women’s usage outpaces men’s on all social networking sites except for Twitter.
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The study used telephone interviews to conduct interviews in November & December of 2012 about the demographics for the major social media networking sites.
Facebook Demographic Stats
The most popular social networking site by far was Facebook. Of all respondents, 67% used Facebook (62% male, 72% female.) A few other facts from the report:
Many Facebook users had higher incomes as 73% of those making 75k were Facebook users
Unlike other social sites, no ethnic statistics were gathered
72% of Urban responders used Facebook compared to 65% of Suburban and 63% Rural
Twitter Demographic Stats
Since 2010, the percentage of respondents using Twitter has doubled from 8% to 16%. The largest segment of users (174) were male, while females weren’t too far behind at 15%. Other Twitter demographic stats:
African American respondents used Twitter at nearly double the rate of white respondents.
Urban use (20%) was nearly double that of rural use (12%).
Hispanic Twitter use trumps White usage by 5 percentage points (19% vs 14%).
Pinterest Demographic Stats
According to this Pew survey, Pinterest is right on Twitter’s heels. Twitter saw 16% of respondents as users while Pinterst saw 15%.
Women’s usage(25%) was 5 times that of men’s usage (5%)
African American Pinterest usage (8%) was half that of White usage (16%)
The 30-49 year old demo had equal usage to that of the 18-29 demo, each at 19%
Instagram Demographic Stats
The only other major competitor in the social report was Instagram, which weighed in at 13% usage. Women’s usage (16%) was 6 percentage points higher than men’s (10%.)
African American Instagram usage more than doubled White usage (23% vs 11%)
Hispanic Instagram (18%) usage also trumped White usage.
Unlike the over visual network in the report, Pinterest, Instagram saw the majority of users from the 18-29 demo (28%). The next oldest demographic segment saw half the usage (14%) and a major drop off occurred after that.
To view the full report and all demographic data, see Pew Internet.
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