Key findings: Demographics of social media users
- Facebook is overall the most popular site
- Google+ is dominated by Baby Boomer men
- Image sharing sites are mainly preferred by Millennial women
- Women are 5 x more likely to use Pinterest than men
- Twitter is the only social media channel to be used by men more than women in every generation
- $50,000 to $74,999 is the most common income bracket among social media users
- Twitter users are most likely to be educated to bachelor degree level
In a recent RealityMine blog post examining mobile device usage, we discovered that Millennials and women are generally the most active social media users, but we’d like to take a deeper dive into the demographics of social media users, by each key social media channel, to find out more about the customers of America’s top social media sites.
We’ve gathered data, using the RealityMine passive mobile metering tool, from 2121 American panelist who use at least one social media app on their mobile device. With this data, we’re able to compare age, gender, household income and education levels of users of the most popular social networks: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.
Gender & Age
Figure 1 shows the gender and generational differences in the audience of each social media channel.
Facebook is overall the most popular site. Millennial and Gen X women are particularly avid users of Facebook. By contrast, Google+ is dominated by Baby Boomer men. Image sharing services Instagram and Pinterest are clearly mainly preferred by Millennial women, with 40% of them using Instagram and 27% using Pinterest.
Women are 5 times more likely to use Pinterest than men. Twitter is the only social media channel that is more used by men than women in every generation, Millennial (23%) and Gen X (21%) men being the main audience.
Social Media Users Split By Household Income
$50,000 to $74,999 is the most common income bracket among social media users. This is particularly evident amongst Pinterest users, where over a third of users belong to this income group.
Twitter users are slightly more likely to have a higher income level, $75,000 or more, compared to users of other channels. In contrast, Google+ users are slightly more likely to belong to the lowest income level group, having annual household income $24,999 or less.
The Education demographics of Social Media Users
When it comes to education, shown in figure 3, a ‘college education without a degree’ is the most common education level among all social media users, at 35%. A Bachelor’s degree is the second most popular education level, and those who use Twitter are most likely to fit this description (27%).
Interestingly, Pinterest users are the least likely to have Postgraduate degree. In comparison, Facebook users are slightly more likely to have any Postgraduate degree, such as Master’s or Doctorate, than users of other social networks.
