65% of online adults now use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago, according to the latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And, for the first time, it means that half of all adults (50%) use social networking sites.
And they’re doing so more frequently. On a typical day, 43% of online adults use social networking, up from 38% a year ago. Only email (which 61% of internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (59%) are used more frequently.
Some demographic highlights from the report:
- Young adult women ages 18-29 are the power users of social networking; fully 89% of those who are online use the sites overall and 69% do so on an average day.
- There are no significant differences in use of social networking sites based on race and ethnicity, household income, education level, or whether the internet user lives in an urban, suburban, or rural environment.
- In the past two years, social networking site use among internet users age 65 and older has grown 150%, from 13% in April 2009 to 33% in May 2011, while use by 50-64 year-old internet users doubled—from 25% to 51%.
- Young adults are still the most avid social networkers, with 83% of online 18-29 year-old online Americans using social media, and 61% doing so every day.
The report is based on data from telephone interviews conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011 among a sample of 2,277 adults age 18 and older.
