Every quarter, GlobalWebIndex preforms studies on how social networking is being used across different age groups and different countries. Over the course of a year, over 170,000 people are questioned in 32 markets including the Americas, Europe and Asia. In the fourth quarter of 2014, a group of people (41,983 adults ages 16 – 64) were selected to participate in the study. Participants are asked to complete a questionnaire about their online activity. The questions are selected in a way to best represent the internet population selected with stipulations in place to displace any anomalies due to age, sex, or education attainment.
These highly informed approximations cover the 3 major forms of online engagement: account ownership, visitation, and active usage. This study is an accurate way of comparing networks because all the networking sites in question use the 3 forms consistently from site to site.
Facebook Drops, Others Rise
One of the first discoveries of the study was the increase of active users to these social sites. There was a consistent rise of active users across all platforms except Facebook this year. Tumblr and Pinterest saw the highest numbers of new active users with increases of 95% and 97% respectively. Instagram and LinkedIn also rose, Instagram came up 47% and LinkedIn increased 38%, which seems to indicate a trend toward diversified social network platforms. Facebook was the only social media network to experience a drop in active users with a decrease of -9%. Twitter rose 10%, YouTube rose 7% and Google+ rose 5%.
Facebook Leading the Charge
Facebook is still the most popular social media network despite its loss in active users. It retains a whopping 81% of members and 42% of its users are active. Facebook is followed by YouTube, Twitter, and then Google+ with Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr behind. The most visited media site on the internet for users 16 – 64 is YouTube at 82% of internet users, compared to Facebook at 73%. Of the 32 countries in the study, 29 see trends identical to these.
This study does show information on how these media sites are used and why. Facebook seems to be used more and more passively over time. Around 40% of Facebook users say they typically just scroll through their newsfeed rather than comment on the posts they observe or even post themselves.
I’ve Got You in My Multiple Sites
But using social networking sites, multiple sites even, is becoming a much more common activity than in years past. The study found that most adults are active on 2.82 networking sites, while they are members on 5.54. There is quite a bit of overlap among networking sites. Visitors who tend to favor one particular social site out of the top networking sites, will usual also visit at least one of the other sites. In fact, 18% of internet users visit all of the top 4 sites, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. There is also a trend toward spending more time on social networking sites. In 2012, the average time spent on these sites was 1.61 hours, which has risen to 1.72 by the end of 2014.
The age group of 16 – 24 year olds have the most accounts with an average of 6.5. But as the age of the group increases, the amount of accounts decreases, with 55 – 64 year olds only typically having 2.9 accounts.
Snapchat App Aims to Catch Facebook Messenger
Facebook remains the most popular social app for mobile devices. As for messaging, the favorite apps are Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This isn’t necessarily true across all countries, however. WeChat is the top messenger in China, and Kakao Talk is top in South Korea.
Snapchat is the fastest growing app with a gain of 57%. In fact, over 35% of teens in the USA, Sweden, and the UK use 
Snapchat. Rounding out the top ten fastest growing apps in 2014 are Facebook Messenger, Pinterest, Instagram, Line, WhatsApp, Vine, Viber, Google+ and Kik.
The Why’s
The age group of 16-24 year olds seem to be on social networks in order to follow celebrities and because of FOMO or the fear of missing out. Pinterest has seen a rise of 90% in active users of this age range. Tumblr seems to be the most popular among this youngest age group while Facebook seems most popular for the group 55-64 who seem to be active just to keep up. Among the middle age groups (35-44) the purpose for social networking and messaging seems to be to promote their work and stay up to date with current events.
It can seem a bit superfluous to collect all this information, but it can actually be quite informative. Besides the usual means of corporations and governments wanting this information in order to sell you more products or direct media and news efforts, if you are an entrepreneur, you can also use this information yourself to plan strategies for marketing. It’s also interesting to see the proliferation and accompanying trends of social networking in our society today.
