Written off umpteen number of times, Zuckerberg owned Facebook continues to be the king of all networking sites in America. A survey conducted by the Pew research Center has revealed that more than half of the American adult population (58 % to be precise) has a Facebook account. Nearly three out of every four online adults were found to be users of the site.
Facebook has become the baseline, “one stop shop” for online interaction, said Nicole Ellison, a professor of information science at the University of Michigan who’s been studying the social media site for the past decade.
“If you look at any line in the post office and see what people are doing on their phones, they’re frequently on Facebook,” said Ellison, who helped design the Pew study.
“Facebook has become kind of a daily practice for many people,” she said. “It’s the default social site.”
Though the percentage of people accessing the site hasn’t gone up since 2013, the average time spent by the user on the site has increased. 70% of the site users visit the site daily and 45% go several times a day, up from 63% who were daily visitors last year.
Egged on by their kids, the older generation is also getting hooked to the site. For the first time, more than half of online adults over 65 were found to be Facebook users. “Their children might say ‘Mom, did you see the photos of the kids I posted on Facebook?’ and that’s when they get on,” said Ellison.
After they start accessing the site, they soon get connected to old friends, colleagues and school mates. “That has its own set of benefits in terms of combating loneliness and creating social support,” she said.
While Facebook continues to reign supreme, Americans are also beginning to explore other social sites. 52% of online adults were seen to be present on two or more social media sites, up from 42% over the previous year. Overall, the survey found that 23% use LinkedIn, 22% Pinterest, 21% Instagram and 19% Twitter.
The photo-sharing platform Instagram was seen to attract younger audiences. 53% of Americans aged 18 to 29 have an Instagram account and nearly half (49%) of them use the site daily. Of Internet-using adults as a whole, 26% have an Instagram account.
Half the internet users with college educations use LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking group. In the online population as a whole, 28% have a LinkedIn account.
Pinterest, the hobby, craft and DIY site, is used predominantly by women. Twenty-eight percent of Internet users have an account. But 42% of American women who are online have an account while 13% of online men do, the Pew survey found.
The Pew Research Center came to these conclusions after interviewing 2,003 internet users across the United States during September 2014.
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