By There’s a lot of talk about social media these days, and for good reason. As the availability of the internet and mobile devices expands, the percentage of people actively using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter grows. The social media industry is worth a staggering $312.78 billion because to the success of just one company, Facebook.
Practically every part of daily life has found some way to include social media. It has seen significant growth over the past decade, and is now used for entertainment, journalism, and commerce. However, its potential influence on human behavior and mental health is being cautiously investigated. Whether your goal is to just connect with friends and family or to expand your business’s reach, there is always something new to discover about social media.
Below, you’ll find a link to an informative infographic from Skilled.co that examines 115 facts about social networking. There are numbers related to expansion, advice for entrepreneurs, and information on patterns of use and dependency. Are you one of the 85% who check Twitter and Facebook first thing in the morning for news, or one of the 18% who can’t go more than a few hours without peeking at their feed? People’s routines are shifting radically.
You may be one of the 90.3 million people who follow pop queen Katy Perry on Twitter or one of the 114.6 million people who adore soccer legend Cristiano Ronaldo on Facebook. That exceeds the total of any public official or prominent scholar. These kinds of figures show how widespread the media has gotten and how effective it is at reaching many different types of people.
Social media sites are the place to be if you operate a website or small business, work for a large corporation, or are a famous person trying to connect with your followers. Connecting with individuals all around the world and swaying their behavior is made incredibly easy by the tools of social media. 37% of respondents stated Facebook had influenced their choice to buy a product or service. The greatest site for consumers to learn about new items and be reminded to make purchases was determined to be Twitter, however its total effect was found to be somewhat less than Facebook’s. If businesses in the retail or service sectors don’t take use of these avenues for advertising, they’ll be missing out. It’s estimated that by 2019, businesses will have spent a whopping $17.34 billion on social media advertising.
Although social media platforms have been around for over two decades, they have only recently experienced widespread adoption. During that decade, social networking sites went from being places where users were hesitant to sign up to becoming among the most popular destinations on the web. There are now billions of people using social media all across the world, and that figure is only expected to grow. In addition, a sizable percentage of social media users report checking their accounts everyday, often several times. This is so they don’t fall behind on the current happenings in the world and the latest updates from their friends and family.
The extent to which Social Media has expanded may be gauged by looking at its worldwide penetration rate. North Americans make up 59% of all social media users, while South Americans make up 50%. The next highest percentage is found in East Asia and East Europe at 48%, then in East Europe and Oceania at 45%, and finally in Central America at 40%. Users in Southeast Asia make up 37% of the total, while Middle Eastern users account for 26%. South Asia, Africa, and Central Asia have the fewest social media users of any continent. Three-tenths of the world’s population is active on at least one social media platform. Keep in mind that many of these people are regularly logging in to their social media accounts. Among major social media platforms, Facebook has the greatest percentage of daily users, at 70%. More than half (59%) of social media users check Instagram everyday, followed by 38% on Twitter, 27% on LinkedIn, and 22% on Pinterest. Ninety-two percent of teens regularly use social media, with the majority (71%) of those users actively participating in more than one network.
People do not, however, rely only on social media to keep tabs on the whereabouts and activities of their loved ones and online acquaintances. To stay informed about what’s happening in the world, many people turn to social media as a news source. Recent studies have shown that Facebook is the most popular social media tool for millennials to utilize to keep up with the news. As a contrast, 24% of high school students say Instagram is their go-to for news. Users that rely only on social networking sites for their news are in the minority. Seventy percent of Redditors rely on the website for up-to-the-minute news, with Facebook and Twitter coming in at 66 and 59 percent, respectively. 31% and 23% of users on Tumblr and Instagram use the platforms to read the news, respectively, however this is more likely to be made up of younger people, such as high school students. Eighty-five percent of internet users get their morning news from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
It may come as a surprise to learn that some individuals access social media sites like Facebook and Twitter first thing in the morning in order to catch up on the day’s news. To some extent, it’s become ingrained in the social media dependency that many individuals experience. About a quarter of iPhone owners said that they check their feed on Twitter before getting out of bed. Research shows that 18% of Facebook users can’t go more than a few hours without checking the platform, and that 1.23 billion people use Facebook for an average of 17 minutes each day.