Social Media Usage: Teens vs. Adults
~ By Colette
Recently, we have been talking with readers of The Prevention Researcher about social media, more specifically, about how youth use social media and the risks and benefits associated with this use. To prepare for an interview with an expert on youth and social media we’ve asked our readers for their thoughts. Many of the readers were interested in how social media can be used to connect with youth. For example, one reader asked: “Do youth, or would they, use social media to disseminate youth-focused health prevention messages?” Another said, “About 2 years ago, I attempted to use Twitter to reach all my youth through one channel …. but it failed miserably. How many youth under 18 are using Twitter now?”
While we are working with an author to write more extensively about using social media to connect with youth, I thought it would be interesting to look at teens’ social media usage in general. If we want to connect with youth via online technologies, then we need to understand how youth are using those technologies, which is often very different than how adults are using them.
Fortunately, The Pew Internet and American Life Project is currently releasing a number of reports about Internet and cell phone use. These reports are based on data from surveys conducted last summer (July through September 2009) with 800 adolescents and 2,253 adults. The data and graphs below are based on the report, Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults.
As these data show, the majority of youth do use the Internet; however, only two-thirds of them (63%) go online at least once a day. And while 8 in 10 teenagers ages 14–17 use a social networking site, only 1 in 10 (10%) use Twitter, and just a little over that (14%) blog.
Of course, there are other pieces to this puzzle. Social media can be accessed via technologies other than desktop and lap top computers (such as mobile phones), and gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status can have a big impact on how youth use social media.
The research by The Pew Internet and American Life Project, has been fascinating and we will use this data to explore these other factors in upcoming blog posts.
All data is from Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults by Amanda Lenhart, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuh, published in February 2010 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:07 am
[...] previously blogged about teens’ and adults’ use of social media, with the goal of understanding how youth are using [...]
June 30th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Excellent post! Relationship building via social media marketing is not a one-size-fits all endeavor. Moms, teens and Baby Boomers are three big social media subgroups groups that are unique. Just like with traditional marketing, the more you know your audience, the more successful you will be at grabbing their attention and keeping it.
July 13th, 2010 at 1:40 am
This was a very helpful article and really nice to have all the numbers in one space. Maybe I spend too much time looking at statistics, but none of the numbers shocked me. What I’ve observed in recent online behaviors of professional peers, friends, and family, they just make sense.
Julienne
July 19th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Interesting analysis. blogging has fallen among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking websites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for micro-blogging with status updates. Internet use is near ubiquitous among teens and young adults. In the last decade, the young adult internet population has remained the most likely to go online.