Social User Report: Women Trump Men Across All Social Platforms Except Twitter

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.

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.