By Nicole Wesche, Staff Writer
Today, there are an estimated 1.96 billion social media users across the globe. Over 74% of all online adults use social networking sites, and as of 2012, 81% of all online teens use some kind of social media.
In addition to the astounding use of social media in our society, different social networking sites receive more access from certain age groups. Over 71% of online adults use Facebook, a percentage unchanged from 2012. Also, a staggering 94% of teens have a Facebook profile and 71% of these teens use more than one social media site.
A study was done to see how teens can possibly keep up with their many social networking sites, and the answer surprised: 92% of teens reported to going online daily, and over 25% of teens reported going online “almost constantly.”
Since 2012, teen preference of Instagram and Twitter has been on the rise. As of spring 2015, 32% of teens prefer to use Instagram, 24% prefer Twitter, while only 14% prefer Facebook.
High schoolers prefer Instagram because they can “keep up with what other people are doing,” to “stay in touch with friends,” and because “it regularly updates me on the lives of others…through the use of photography.”
Twitter is also regularly used by high schoolers because “it’s the most updated and easiest to use,” “you can easily keep up with celebrities,” and “you can tweet anything you want, there’s the option of favoriting and retweeting a tweet, and the content on there is great.”
Teens also have their reasons for not preferring Facebook. “I don’t like it because my parents use it, and there’s a lot of spam accounts,” and it’s “boring,” “only for old people,” and “difficult to connect with celebrities.” Also, “less of my friends have a Facebook account,” and “my friends don’t like it and I don’t like it.”
Among parents, the statistics about social networking site use are drastically different. Seventy-five percent of online parents use Facebook, while only 25% of online parents use Instagram, and 23% percent use Twitter.
Many parents use Facebook because “that’s where most of my friends are,” and it keeps me “in touch with my friends.”
Interviewing parents, it became clear that many parents had Instagram and Twitter accounts, but they checked them irregularly, if ever. Also, some parents only had these accounts to keep track of their kids and what they post on social networking sites.
In addition to teens and parents using social networking sites, older folks are starting to create accounts too. For adults over age 65, 49% of them use social media sites, and some 56% of internet users ages 65 and older now use Facebook, up from 45% who did so in late 2013.
Besides email, adults above 65 years old only really use Facebook when it comes to social media. Twitter and Instagram are much more popular among teens and young adults.