Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Report: As of August 2012, 69% of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites

As of August 2012, 69% of online adults use social networking sites.

As of August 2012:

• 12% of online adults say they use Pinterest
• 12% of online adults say they use Instagram
• 5% of online adults say they use Tumblr
• 66% of online adults say they use Facebook
• 20% of online adults say they use LinkedIn
• 16% of online adults say they use Twitter

More details on specific social networking sites are below. For a detailed demographic portrait of users of various social networking sites (Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) please see our recent report, Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online .

Looking more closely at gender differences, women have been significantly more likely to use social networking sites than men since 2009:

• In August 2012, 75% of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 63% of men.
• Women are also more active in their use of these sites, with more than half of female internet users using social networking sites on a typical day (54%), compared with 42% of male internet users. (February 2012)

Between February 2005 and August 2006, the use of social networking sites among young adult internet users ages 18-29 jumped from 9% to 49% and has steadily increased since then.

Click here to download a spreadsheet of the above data.

Mobile

The growing ubiquity of cell phones, especially the rise of smartphones, has made social networking just a finger tap away.  Fully 40% of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28% do so on a typical day.  Young people, blacks, Hispanics, the highly educated and those with a higher annual household income are more likely to use SNS on their phones than other groups.

For more specific information on our findings on the social impact of technology, please see http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Technology-and-social-networks.aspx and http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Series/Social-impact-of-technology.aspx

Social networking sites (more detail)

As of August 2012:

• 46% of adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created. We call them creators.
• 41% of adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and repost them on sites designed for sharing images with many people. We call them curators.
• Overall, 56% of internet users do at least one of the creating or curating activities we studied and 32% of internet users do both creating and curating activities.
• 12% of online adults say they use Pinterest, which is dominated by women. Nearly a fifth of online women (19%) use Pinterest.
• 12% of online adults say they use Instagram, which is dominated by young adults. Some 27% of the internet users between ages 18-29 use Instagram.
• 5% of online adults say they use Tumblr. Some 11% of young adults use this social blogging service.

(http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Online-Pictures/Main-Findings.aspx)

Facebook still dominates the social network sphere.  As of February 2012, 89% of social network site users had a Facebook account.  Those below age 50 are particularly likely to have one, although there aren’t any significant differences across other demographic groups.  Besides Facebook:

• Besides Facebook where there are more female users, none of the other social networking sites show a significant difference in use between sexes. This is a change since November 2010 when all SNS platforms but LinkedIn had more female users.

The average Facebook user gets more from their friends on Facebook than they give to their friends. Why? Because of a segment of “power users,” who specialize in different Facebook activities and contribute much more than the typical user does.

We conducted a new study that for the first time combines server logs of Facebook activity with survey data to explore the structure of Facebook friendship networks and measures of social well-being. These data were then matched with survey responses. And the new findings show that over a one-month period:

• 40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request
• Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times
• Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12
• 12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

Read more about Facebook activity and Facebook “power users” in our report, Why most Facebook users get more than they give.

Social impact

Do social networking sites isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? In November 2010, we examined SNS in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, community, and political engagement, and found:

• Social networking sites are increasingly used to keep up with close social ties
• The average user of a social networking site has more close ties and is half as likely to be socially isolated as the average American
• Facebook users are more trusting than others
• Facebook users have more close relationships
• Internet users get more support from their social ties and Facebook users get the most support
• Facebook users are much more politically engaged than most people
• Facebook revives “dormant” relationships
• MySpace users are more likely to be open to opposing points of view

Politics

Social networking sites have become an important additional arena for politics.  They are a resource for political news, information, finding likeminded issue-oriented people, and a tool for voter outreach in the run-up to elections.  During the 2012 campaign season, Pew Internet released a number of reports on the role of social networking sites on elections and the political process:

• Social Media and Voting
• Social Media and Political Engagement
• Politics on Social Networking Sites“