Discovering Trends of Social Networking Users

Pew Research has recently reported that 65% of American adults are social networking users. Here, I’ll dig deeper into Pew’s study and share today’s trends amongst social media users.

Age: Unsurprisingly, young adults (ages 18-29) rank number one when it comes to social media users with a sturdy 90%. Looking on the opposite end of the spectrum, users 65 and older have made the biggest jump from 2% in 2005 to 35% in 2015.

Gender: Gender doesn’t hold a huge difference when it comes to social networking. Today, 68% of women and 62% of men use social media.

Socio-economic: Much like the 65+ aged social users, there has been a leap in the number of users coming from low income households (households making less than $30,000 a year). In 2005, only 4% of low income households used social media compared to the 56% that are users now, in 2015. Seventy-eight percent of those living in the highest income households use social.

Racial and ethical: Race comparisons hold relatively steady across the board with 65% of whites, 65% of Hispanics, and 56% of African Americans using social media.

Community: A consistent trend is that of users’ living communities. Only 58% of rural residents use social media compared with 68% and 64% of suburban and urban residents, respectively.

Education: The current 2015 trend is that the more education a person has, the more likely  they are to use social media with the numbers standing at 76% of  those with college or graduate degrees, 70% with some college education, and 54% with a high school diploma or less.

With these trends and percentages, marketers can target their audiences specifically and predict the trends of the future.