Instagram was the fastest growing major social network in the US last year, but Facebook retained its lead.
The study, from Pew Research, indicates that Instagram’s growth rate was found to be greater than its competition which brought its total userbase to cover 26 percent of the adult population in the country.
The results in this report are based on the 81% of American adults who use the internet. Other key findings:
• Multi-platform use is on the rise: 52% of online adults now use two or more social media sites, a significant increase from 2013, when it stood at 42% of internet users.
• For the first time, more than half of all online adults 65 and older (56%) use Facebook. This represents 31% of all seniors.
• For the first time, roughly half of internet-using young adults ages 18-29 (53%) use Instagram. And half 0f all Instagram users (49%) use the site daily.
• For the first time, the share of internet users with college educations using LinkedIn reached 50%.
Women dominate Pinterest: 42% of online women now use the platform, compared with 13% of online men.
Data showed that there was a nine percent increase over 2013 in the segment of U.S. adults that use this popular photo-sharing social network, which so happens to be owned by the world’s largest social network, Facebook.
The report showed that there wasn’t much change in Facebook’s position. It retained its position as the number one social network among U.S. adults with 71 percent having a Facebook presence.
The rise in Instagram’s popularity was also noticed among young adults who are aged between 18-29 years. According to the Pew Research Internet Project as of 2014 over 53 percent of young adults in the U.S. are on Instagram.
Other than that, the study also found that Twitter, Pinterest and even LinkedIn saw a huge increase in users over the past year.
Facebook engagement grows fastest
Facebook’s large base of users continues to be very active.
A massive 70% engage with the site daily (and 45% do so several times a day), a significant increase from the 63% who did so in 2013.
This is far ahead of the half (49%) of Instagram users and 17% of Pinterest users that engage with their respective platforms daily, and neither of these represent a significant change from 2013.
Some 36% of Twitter users visit the site daily, but this actually represents a 10-point decrease from the 46% who did so in 2013. While the 13% of LinkedIn users who engage with the platform daily is unchanged from 2013, the proportion of users who use the site weekly or less often increased significantly—that is, more users log on less frequently.
52% of online adults use multiple social media sites with Facebook acting as “home base”
Over half (52%) of online adults use two or more social media sites, a significant increase from the 42% who did so in 2013.
At the same time, significantly fewer adults use just one site — 28% compared with 36% last year. As in 2013, Facebook remains the most popular site among those who use only one — fully 79% of those who use just one site report using Facebook.
As in years past, a significant majority of Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn users say they also use Facebook, more than any other site. At the same time, the proportion of Facebook users who also use another site is on the rise — that is, there are more Facebook users this year who also use Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn than there were in 2013.
Social media users in the entire adult population
The results of this report are focused on all internet users. In this survey, 81% of all American adults ages 18+ are internet users. The usage figures of the five social networking platforms measured are presented as a proportion of the total American adult population.
Methodology
The findings reported here were collected in omnibus surveys underwritten by the University of Michigan. The survey questions were designed in consultation with Dr. Nicole Ellison and Dr. Cliff Lampe from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Further reports with more details about how people use social media will be produced later this year.
The results are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from September 11 to September 14, 2014 and September 18 to September 21, 2014. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (1,002) and cell phone (1,001, including 594 without a landline phone). For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. For results based on Internet users (n=1,597), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/
