The Social Media Demographics Report

August 2017

Differences in age, gender, and income at the top platforms

KEY POINTS
  • Social media penetration is growing in the US, and the demographic makeup of each major platform is becoming more diverse. Nearly 70% of all US adults used at least one social media site in 2016, up from 50% in 2010.
  • US Facebook users aged 45-54 are spending more time on Facebook, and represent 21% of the total time spent on the platform, more than any other age group. This also means that Facebook users are starting to diversify, presenting an opportunity for brands to target multiple desirable audiences at the same time.
  • Instagram edges ahead of Snapchat in terms of daily usage. Sixty-three percent of US teens indicated that they used Instagram every day in 2016, versus 54% who use Snapchat daily. In 2015, it was the other way around — 61% of teens used Snapchat and 56% used Instagram every day.
  • Twitter is losing some ground when it comes to its most engaged users, those between 12 and 24 years old. In 2016, 8% of US consumers aged 12-24 said Twitter was the social media platform they used most often. In 2017, that figure dropped to 1%, implying that even its most devoted users are shifting their attention to other social platforms.
  • LinkedIn is popular among high-income users. Forty-five percent of US adult internet users with an income higher than $75,000 annually are on LinkedIn, making it more popular among this demographic than Instagram (31%), Pinterest (35%), or Twitter (30%).
  • Women make up most of Pinterest’s monthly user base, and drive an overwhelming majority of traffic. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Pinterest’s monthly users in the US are women, according to comScore data. The gender divide is even more pronounced when looking at time spent on the platform — women accounted for 86% of time spent on Pinterest in the US as of May 2017, up 10 percentage points from May 2015.
  • Snapchat’s adult user base is starting to age. The age composition of Snapchat users in the US has become more evenly distributed over the past year, and it appears the company is doing a better job of attracting older users.
  • Teens are starting to use a category of social media called “digital hangouts.” These are apps that enable users to video chat with several friends simultaneously. Over 60% of users on Houseparty, one of the most popular digital hangout apps, are under 24 years old, which is slightly higher than the 58% of Snapchat’s daily users who fall in the same demographic.

Introduction

Social networks are here to stay, and they’re constantly evolving. Globally, more than 2.8 billion people — or 37% of the world’s population, per Hootsuite — use social media, but the way those users interact with each other, and the platforms they adopt, vary widely. In the US market, gender, income, and education level have little impact on whether an individual has adopted social networking as an activity. Age does remain a factor — younger internet users tend to be more likely to engage in social networking overall, and adopt specific social platforms.

While nearly all social platforms offer tools that let marketers target particular audience segments, advertisers must track how these audience bases — and their behaviors — are shifting. Nearly 70% of US adults use at least one social media site, according to Pew Research Center, up from 60% in 2013 and 50% in 2010.

As consumers spend more time on social media, nearly all platforms are turning to video to keep users locked in. Brands are taking notice, as social is now the most important destination for digital video advertisers, surpassing even pureplay video platforms like YouTube, according to Trusted Media Brands.

In this report, BI Intelligence highlights the key audience demographics for six major social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It examines multiple dimensions of change within each platform’s demographic makeup — including age, income, education, gender, and overall adoption in terms of online adults in the US — and assesses how certain segments of the US population have adapted their social media behaviors. The report also explores how much time each age demographic is investing on each platform.

Note: At the very end of the report is an Appendix with charts that provide granular views of the most popular platforms. 

Facebook

Nearly everybody is on Facebook, regardless of gender, income, education level, or market. And growth on the social network doesn’t seem to be slowing. The social giant announced that it reached 2 billion users in June 2017, meaning its global user base grew 17% year-over-year (YoY) in Q2 2017, in line with growth rates over the previous two quarters.

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Here are some notable ways Facebook’s demographics are evolving:

Facebook is reaching more of the US’ older generations. In 2016, 84% of online adults in the US aged 30-49 used Facebook, according to Pew Research Center. A year before, that percentage was 79%. Meanwhile, the percentage of people aged 50-64 who used Facebook increased in 2016, and the adoption rate among those 65 and older shot up 14 percentage points to 62%.

  • US Facebook users aged 45-54 are spending more time on Facebook, and represent 21% of the total time spent on the platform, more than any other age group. Although the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups aren’t far behind, each with 20% of time spent on Facebook, their shares are down from 25% and 23%, respectively, in 2014, per comScore. Meanwhile, share of time spent by users aged 45-54 has increased four percentage points from 17% in 2014.
  • Only 35% of Facebook’s adult user base in the US is aged 18 to 34, which, along with LinkedIn, is the lowest proportion seen among the major social networks, according to comScore data from May 2017.

Facebook reaches more US women than men. However, the gap is starting to narrow. In 2015, 77% of adult women in the US and 66% of men were on Facebook, an 11-point gap. In 2016, the gap narrowed by eight percentage points, with Facebook reaching 83% and 75% of US women and men, respectively, per Pew. As we’ll discuss in our section on Pinterest, the gender split isn’t necessarily a disadvantage (and could be construed as a plus) since so many advertisers seek to target women, who ultimately make most household spending decisions.

  • The gender split on Facebook is basically even, but women spend almost twice as much time on the platform. Of Facebook’s monthly users, 52% are female and 48% are male as of May 2017, and that ratio has remained consistent for the past two years, according to comScore. However, female users represent 63% of time spent on Facebook.

Facebook is still a daily habit for most US teens, but it’s viewed as a staple, and other social platforms are heavily favored by the demographic. Only 11% of US teens indicated that Facebook was their favorite social platform in spring 2017, nearly flat from spring 2015. However, 65% of US teens still accessed Facebook every day as of November 2016, up from 59% in November 2014, according to UBS. This is the highest daily use of any social platform among teens, edging out Instagram at 63% and Snapchat at 54%.

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Instagram

Instagram is adding users at an incredibly rapid pace. The photo- and video-sharing platform is steadily taking the place of Facebook and Twitter among teens and young millennials. Instagram reached 700 million monthly active users (MAU) in April 2017, up from 600 million MAU in December 2016. This is the fastest Instagram has added100 million MAU since its launch, in just a four-month period.

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While Instagram’s demographic makeup is likely evolving quickly as new users sign up in droves, here are some of the most recent important data points regarding the platform’s user base:

  • Instagram and Snapchat are neck-and-neck in terms of teen adoption, and are used by 76% and 75% of US teens, respectively. These usage rates are higher than any other social network, with Facebook trailing as the third-most used social platform among teens at 66%, according to a survey conducted by The Associated Press and NORC.
  • But in terms of daily usage, Instagram edges ahead of Snapchat. Sixty-three percent of US teens indicated that they used Instagram every day in 2016, versus 54% who use Snapchat daily. In 2015, it was the other way around — 61% of teens used Snapchat and 56% used Instagram every day. One explanation for this reversal is that Instagram is increasingly adding Snapchat-esque features to lure in more teens.
  • Instagram is the third-most popular social network (after Facebook and Snapchat) when slightly older, millennial-centric age cohorts are examined. 
    • In the US, 20% of 12- to 24-year-olds said Instagram was the social media site they used most,according to this year’s “Infinite Dial” survey from Edison Research and Triton Digital. This was a three-percentage-point increase from 2016. Facebook was cited as such by 39% of respondents, and Snapchat was in second place with 31%.
    • Instagram reaches 59% of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US, according to Pew, which is considerably higher than the proportion who are on Pinterest (36%), LinkedIn (34%), and Twitter (36%). Eighty-eight percent of 18- to 29-year-olds are on Facebook.
    • US adults between the ages of 18 and 34 still account for a majority of the time spent on Instagram, when isolating for the teen population. This demographic accounts for 76% of the total time spent on Instagram, up from 69% in 2014, according to comScore. A caveat, however, is that this data excludes teen users, as comScore doesn’t track mobile usage of minors.
    • But older users are starting to hop on the Instagram bandwagon. Of US adults on Instagram, 38% were over the age of 45 in May 2017, up from 32% at the end of 2014, per comScore. While this is important for brands that want to target older, higher-earning individuals, the “invasion of parents” on Instagram can cause younger users to engage less often, and opt for other platforms, namely Snapchat.

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Twitter

It’s been a bumpy road for Twitter lately. The company has seen a mass exodus of high-profile executives, and user growth has only recently started to accelerate after years of stagnation. In Q1 2017, Twitter’s global ad revenue growth declined for the first time since 2013, and revenue growth generally lags audience growth.

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  • US user growth has been accelerating, albeit slowly, for the past year. US MAU increased7% YoY in Q1 2017, the fastest growth rate since Q2 2015, when MAU increased 9%. This also marks the first time US MAU growth outpaced international MAU growth (6%) in over two years.
  • However, Twitter usage is in decline relative to other social networks, at least in the US market. The penetration rates among all internet users aged 12 and above in the previously cited 2017 edition of the “Infinite Dial” survey are Twitter (23%), Snapchat (29%), Pinterest (30%), and Instagram (34%).
  • And it’s losing some ground when it comes to its most engaged users between the ages of 12 and 24. In 2016, 8% of US consumers between the ages of 12 and 24 said Twitter was the social media platform they used most often. In 2017, that figure dropped to 1%, implying that even its most devoted users are shifting their attention to other social platforms.

Unlike other social networks that boast a stronghold on certain demographics — e.g. Snapchat and Instagram among teens and users in their twenties, or Pinterest among women, or LinkedIn among high-income users — Twitter doesn’t seem to have any particular demographic niche. Twitter is marginally younger than Facebook: 38% of Twitter users in the US market are between 18 and 34, and 17% are between 18 and 24, according to comScore data. For Facebook, the corresponding numbers are 35% and 15%.

Twitter’s most important differentiator seems to be that its users tend to use the service to share news and commentary in real time, which likely makes it a difficult advertising platform to navigate for brands seeking to target broad audience segments, as seen in the ad revenue decline in Q1 2017.

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a much smaller social network than many of its peers in the industry. The company last reported user metrics in Q3 2016, prior to the completion of Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of the professional network. And although the registered global user base of 467 million is sizeable, only 106 million members, or 23% of all users, accessed LinkedIn on a monthly basis as of Q3 2016. (LinkedIn has since announced that total registered users surpass 500 million.) For comparison, Pinterest passed 150 million monthly users in October 2016.

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But LinkedIn has certain strengths compared with other social networks. It has the highest adoption rate among high-income and highly educated users of the top social networks other than Facebook, making its user base particularly attractive for certain types of marketers, including business-to-business (B2B) advertisers.

  • The social network is very popular among high-income users. Forty-five percent of US adult internet users with an income higher than $75,000 annually are on LinkedIn, meaning it’s more popular among this demographic than Instagram (31%), Pinterest (35%), or Twitter (30%).
  • Unsurprisingly for a job-oriented social network, LinkedIn’s most notable demographic skew is based on education. Half of college-educated adult web users in the US are on LinkedIn, compared with only 27% of those with some college education, according to Pew. Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram all have lower rates of adoption among the college-educated set.
  • However, LinkedIn has some weaknesses demographically speaking. Its active users tend to be older, male, and less ethnically diverse than those on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. LinkedIn has very low rates of penetration among users in their teens and early twenties — only 9% of the US internet population aged 12 to 24 is on LinkedIn, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital.
  • LinkedIn is the most trusted social media platform. Content on the platform is more likely to be viewed as forthright and honest, which increases the persuasiveness of ads and marketing messages that appear alongside it, according to BI Intelligence’s 2017 Digital Trust survey. This also creates ideal conditions for thought leadership, and branded and sponsored content, to flourish.

LinkedIn is an attractive platform for reaching highly educated professionals, and its professional nature makes it an effective channel for B2B marketing, while other platforms are vying for business-to-consumer (B2C) ad dollars.

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Pinterest

Pinterest’s user base isn’t growing at the same clip as some of its closest competitors. In the two years since it last raised funding, Pinterest’s user base has grown by 75 million MAU, from 100 million in September 2015 to 175 million in April 2017. In about the same time, Instagram’s monthly users grew by 400 million to just under 600 million, and stands today at more than 700 million, as mentioned. If Pinterest can’t compete with the audience sizes of its rivals, then its value will rest in its ability to monetize existing users more efficiently.

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  • Pinterest’s efforts to expand internationally are succeeding. More than half (80 million) of Pinterest’s users are outside of the US, along with 75% of new signups — a positive sign for drawing in international ad spend.
  • Women make up most of Pinterest’s monthly user base, and drive an overwhelming majority of traffic. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Pinterest’s monthly users in the US are women, according to comScore data. The gender divide is even more pronounced when looking at time spent on the platform — women accounted for 86% of time spent on Pinterest in the US as of May 2017, up 10 percentage points from May 2015.
  • But men are also increasingly joining the platform. They make up 40% of signups, and are growing at a 70% annual clip as of April 2017. Diversifying beyond its core demographic of female users will also be important for attracting a broader range of advertisers.

The truth is that Pinterest’s skew toward women can hardly be considered a fatal flaw. Women drive 70-80% of global consumer purchasing decisions, per professional services firm EY, so many different types of brand marketers and consumer packaged goods brands will continue to remain focused on female audiences.

While the time spent on Pinterest skews heavily female, the share of time spent in terms of age is becoming more evenly distributed. In October 2014, US adults between the ages of 25 and 34 accounted for 42% of the time spent on Pinterest, but that percentage dropped 18 percentage points to 24% in May 2017. This means that although the user age breakdown has stayed relatively consistent for the past few years, Pinterest is doing a better job of keeping older users engaged on the platform, especially those 45 and older.

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Snapchat

Snapchat has grown into one of the principal social networks in a short period of time. In just two years, the ephemeral camera app doubled its daily active users (DAU), to reach 166 million in Q1 2017, versus 81 million in Q1 2015. While this pales in comparison to the 250 million Instagram members using the “Stories” feature, Snapchat certainly has advantages when it comes to the fanfare of younger demographics.

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  • A vast majority, 85% to be exact, of Snapchat’s DAU were under the age of 35 at the end of last year. The teenage population accounts for 22% of the platform’s daily users while 63% fall into the millennial demographic (18-35).
  • Snapchat’s rise as the favorite social media app among US teens has been one of the most pronounced trends in the social sphere over the past few years. According to Piper Jaffray’s spring 2017 survey, 39% of US teens chose Snapchat as their favorite social media platform, a 15-percentage-point increase from 24% a year ago. Instagram was a distant second, favored by 23% of teens.
  • And its adult user base is starting to age. The age composition of Snapchat users in the US has become more evenly distributed over the past year, and it appears as though the company is doing a better job of attracting older users. In December 2016, users aged 35 and older represented 46% of Snapchat’s adult user base in the US, up from 24% a year earlier, according to comScore. However, the data differs from Snapchat’s internally reported DAU metrics, which are more indicative of engagement rather than composition breakdown. Here are a few observations:
    • The teen exclusion caveat. comScore does not measure the mobile usage of those below the age of 18, so the data is not exactly representative of Snapchat’s actual user base.
    • Younger users are still the most engaged. While the comScore data looks at the composition breakdown, it does not capture the engagement factor by assessing the daily usage among age cohorts. Users younger than 25 visited Snapchat over 20 times and spent over 30 minutes per day on the app. Meanwhile, Snapchat users over 25 visited 12 times and spent 20 minutes per day.

Assuming the comScore data correlates somewhat to Snapchat’s MAU age breakdown, the company has some work to do to convince older users to open up the app and engage more frequently. Diversifying the user base beyond the millennial demographic could help drive user growth, and provide more targeting options for advertisers, two aspects that the camera company’s investors are likely paying close attention to.

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The Habits And Preferences Of US Teens And Young Millennials

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  • Instagram and Snapchat are so popular that they’re gaining on (and in Snapchat’s case, surpassing) Facebook among all users aged 12 to 24. In early 2015, 74% of US internet users aged 12 to 24 were on Facebook, 59% were on Instagram, and 57% were on Snapchat, according to Edison Research. Fast forward to 2017, and the usage rates for 12- to 24-year-olds for Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are 76%, 73%, and 79%, respectively.
  • Teens and young millennials are consolidating their time into three apps: Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. When asked which social media network they use most often, 39% of US consumers between the ages of 12 and 25 said Facebook in 2017, compared with 32% who chose the social media site in 2016. Snapchat and Instagram also saw similar increases in frequency of usage among this demographic. Together, these three apps were used most often by 90% of the 12-24 age segment in 2017, up from 75% in 2016.
  • But teens are starting to use a category of social media called “digital hangouts.” Digital hangout apps are essentially apps where users can video chat with several friends at once. One of the most popular of these is Houseparty. More than 60% of Houseparty users are under 24 years old, which is slightly higher than the 58% of Snapchat’s daily users who fall in the same demographic.
  • This means that what teens think is cool changing quickly. Social platforms tend to lose their cool as they age and newer, disruptive platforms come to market. While Snapchat certainly still has the cool factor among teenagers in the US, group video chat apps with sharing capabilities could be the next disruptive platform on the horizon.
  • Advertisers should start thinking about monetization and brand messaging now. Communicating a brand message to a group of friends watching videos together presents a unique opportunity for brands to cash in on digital living rooms. However, strategies must be carefully structured as to not annoy users nor disrupt the communicative aspect of these environments.

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BOTTOM LINE

  • The demographic composition of social platforms is changing quickly, and advertisers should actively monitor where their most valuable audiences are spending time.
  • Many top social networks skew female, including Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
  • LinkedIn enjoys high adoption among highly educated and high-income users.
  • The aging of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Snapchat is more apparent than ever.
  • Instagram and Snapchat are so popular they’re gaining (and in Snapchat’s case, surpassing) on Facebook among all users aged 12 to 24.
  • Twitter’s most important differentiator seems to be that its users tend to use the service to share news and commentary in real time.
  • Teens and young millennials are consolidating their time into three apps: Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.
  • More than half of Pinterest’s users are outside of the US, along with 75% of new signups — a positive sign for drawing in international ad spend.

Appendix: Additional Charts

Here’s a look at how social platforms have penetrated the US market over the past five years:

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The gender breakdown of all the major social networks skew slightly female, with Pinterest being the outlier with by far the largest female user base.

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Looking at time spent, the division is more clear. Women spend more time than men across the board.

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geo social breakdown

Source: Business Insider, Kevin Gallagher

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