In 2020 the top 3 social media sites are Facebook winning the top spot at 2.45 billion active monthly users, Instagram at 1 billion, and Reddit in third place with 430 million (1). By definition, demographics are statistical data relating to the population and particular groups within. Social Media platforms use demographics to direct content to people who would be interested. Say for example an ad for home decor would be suggested to women aged 20-40 years old. It’s used to tailor content for a more user-friendly experience. Facebook and Instagram are known to have a higher female user base, 54% and 51% female usage respectively (2).  While Reddit is more male-dominated in usage with 69% of its users being male (4). Instagram is primarily a mobile application, you can access the platform online, but you are unable to upload any photos that way. Just basic commenting and liking features are available. With that being said both Facebook and Instagram are used via mobile. Facebook has a giant percentage gap of 96% of its users accessing via mobile and 25% via desktop (2). Reddit on the other hand is the opposite. Only 44% of its monthly users access the site via mobile app or browser (3). I think this is due to the nature of the website being a forum style design. Having a larger screen makes reading discussions much easier.

 

Facebook hits the top of the list because of its wide range of offered activities.  Not only can you scroll endlessly on your newsfeed seeing posts, photos, and videos, but the social media platform also offers big opportunities for businesses. Business pages have multiple tools to create ads, shopping plugins, and events for your customers to engage with. You can target your post to show to certain demographics which can increase your sales tremendously. Throw in the fact that Facebook also has games, groups, and marketplace features, it’s no wonder such a diverse social media giant is so popular. Facebook also makes creating a space of your own so easy. You add family and friends so you can see as much or as little as you’d like. You customize your feed by following pages or people you find interesting content. Liking or commenting on posts and videos creates an algorithm to show you more of what you “like”, so you’re constantly being shown content you’re more likely to enjoy. On an average day, Facebook users spend about 35 minutes browsing the media platform (2).

 

In second place is the now Facebook-owned social media platform Instagram. Instagram is an endless scroll of photos and visual posts. The app’s main focus is on imagery. Users follow other users or hashtags in the app to filter what sort of images they see. #Hashtags can be added to post descriptions to help categorize images so others can find them easier. Hashtags are short words or phrases that group similar images together. Clicking a hashtag will bring you to a page feed full of related images. From there you can find new accounts to follow or just other images to like. In 2018 Instagram added the option to make images “shoppable” (1) by adding link options within the app that will take users to an external storefront. This was huge for small shops as they can reach a much wider audience by using hashtags. Essentially it is like free advertising! Instagrams fairly new added features of short term story posts and live video posting it can create a more personal feel to accounts that can make users feel closer to merchants and friends alike. About 63% of users on Instagram are between the ages of 18 to 34 (1). Instagram users tend to spend a bit more time on the platform with a whopping 53 minutes per day.

 

Last but not least is Reddit. Reddit is a social media platform that is made up of over 150,000 communities dedicated to a huge variety of niches (1). People frequent Reddit because of its diversity. The website is built like a forum, with threads where users can sub comment and post their own discussions. Personally I have found great use of Reddit when it comes to my school books. I was able to purchase a pdf version of a book for only $15 compared to the $85 or more that I would have paid by buying it on Amazon or through a bookstore. Reddit has the shortest user average time spent on the platform at only 16 minutes a day (4).

 

Social Media is constantly changing. New platforms like TikTok are quickly rising to stardom and becoming more popular amongst younger users. Come back in a few months to a year and this post will be numerically outdated with user info. But Instagram still continues to be on the rise and be one of the fastest-growing platforms. (5) I think this is largely due to new features they continue to roll out. Adding live videos, story photos, and allowing businesses to link their products directly to image posts has greatly increased the possibility of outreach within the platform. Hashtags within the interface allow users to follow very specific trends as well as find new users/businesses within their chosen hashtags. Content usability on Instagram is very simple and easy for its users. A lot of cool features, but not so many like Facebook that it’s overwhelming.

 

Sources Cited: 

(1) Kristi Kellogg, Search Engine Journal : https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media/biggest-social-media-sites/

(2) Khoros : https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide

(3) Pamela Bump, Hubspot : https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/reddit-stats

(4) Media Kix : https://mediakix.com/blog/reddit-statistics-users-demographics/#:~:text=Among%20the%20top%2015%20most,10.4%20pages%20per%20Reddit%20session

(5) Influencer Marketing : https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-sites/#:~:text=%232%3A%20Instagram,feed%20through%20the%20website%20version