WK5 Understanding Social Media Demographics

1. What were the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, in 2019-20? List them in order of popularity.

Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/

2. Provide a brief summary of how each social media site works and why people use it.

Facebook is used more for long conversations, keeping in touch with family and some friends, and long articles. With Instagram, it’s more for sharing just one picture or just one little moment at a time with usually just your friends and followers. YouTube is all about videos, you can post almost any kind whether it’s, music, a movie, a blog, or a news story.

3. What are “demographics” and why is it important in social media?

Demographics tells you who visits your site. This way you know who your site is getting attention from, so you can figure out how to get more people to your site.

4. Explain any demographics that stand out among the three social media sites you listed above. (More popular with a specific age group, are majority of users male or female, married or single, employees or self-employed, etc.)

One thing that comes to mind is Facebook, growing up everybody used it but now it is mostly only the older generations. Everything goes in fades and even Instagram will eventually be an older generation thing.

5. On average, how much time do users spend on each social media site during a day, week or month? Provide a resource that supports your answer.

According to an article on Review42 written in July 2020,

• South America is the continent where social media time is the highest – 3 hours and 29 minutes.
• People in Europe spend an average of 1 hour and 53 minutes on social media.
• North Americans use social media for around 2 hours and 6 minutes daily.
• In Asia, the usage of social media is 2 hours and 16 minutes daily.
• Africans utilize social media for 3 hours and 10 minutes a day.

https://review42.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-social-media/#:~:text=Internet%20users%20spend%20an%20average,on%20social%20networking%20in%202019.

6. Which of the three social media networks is growing the fastest? Why do you think that is?

While Facebook is the largest, Instagram is running a close behind. If taken into account that Facebook is six years older the Instagram, it may pass it in the coming years. Humans have a tendency to lose interest in things that are not the newest, and even Instagram will one day be considered outdated.

7. How are the majority of visitors accessing these three sites (computer, mobile device, tablet)?

According to an article by The Manifest,

• People use a combination of methods to access social media, including mobile apps (67%), computer web browsers (57%), mobile web browsers (41%), and tablet apps (31%).
• Nearly half of social media users (46%) prefer to access social media on mobile apps.
• Females are more likely to use mobile apps to access social media (52%), and males are more likely to prefer computer web browsers (33%).

https://themanifest.com/social-media/how-people-use-social-media-2018