65% of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites and Most Like the Experience

A recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that nearly two out of three online U.S. adults say they use a social networking site, with most describing their experiences in positive terms.

According to the survey, 65 percent of adult Internet users say they use a social networking site, up from 61 percent last year. Pew Internet notes that this year’s figure is more than double the 29 percent response observed in 2008. The report also notes that this is the first time in Pew Internet surveys that more than half of all U.S. adults say they use social networking sites.

“The pace with which new users have flocked to social networking sites has been staggering; when we first asked about social networking sites in February of 2005, just 8% of internet users — or 5% of all adults — said they used them,” write Mary Madden, senior research specialist at Pew Internet; and Kathryn Zickuhr, research specialist.

When respondents were asked to describe their experiences using these social networking sites, “good” was the most common response, with positive responses easily overshadowing negative and neutral words. “Fun,” “great,” “interesting” and “convenient” were also popular responses. Less common words used included “astounding,” “necessity” and “empowering.”

Negative responses were heard from about one out of five respondents who offered their input. These negative words exhibited more diversity, with “annoying,” “overwhelming,” “boring,” “confusing” and “overrated” among the more popular negative terms used.

The survey also found that 43 percent of online adults use social networking on a typical day, up from 38 percent a year ago, and up from just 13 percent in 2008. Of all the daily online activities that were asked about in the survey, only email (61 percent) and search engines (59 percent) are used more often than social networking tools on a typical day.

Social networking sites are most popular with women and young adults under age 30, according to Pew Internet. Young adult women ages 18-29 are called the “power users of social networking,” with 89 percent of those who are online using social networking sites – 69 percent on an average day.

Sixty percent of male Internet users use social networking sites, compared with 69 percent of women. When broken down by age, 83 percent of Internet users ages 18-29 use social networking sites, compared with 70 percent of users ages 30-49, 51 percent of users ages 50-64 and 33 percent of users 65+.

According to separate data from Experian Hitwise, for the week ending Aug. 27, the top social networking site was Facebook with 65.24 percent of visits to the industry “Computers and Internet – Social Networking and Forums.” YouTube was second with 19.60 percent, followed by Twitter with 1.32 percent.

Sources:

http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP-SNS-Update-2011.pdf

http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html