It’s quite clear that social media has become an important part of many people’s lives, but we often don’t realize the full expanse of social media’s kingdom. What are the specifics? Here are 7 useful points about the top three social media networks.

•  So, what were the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, in 2019-20 years to this date?

A study by SimilarWeb in November of 2020 stated that the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, were YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, listed in order of popularity.
YouTube – 34.6 Billion monthly visitors
Facebook – 25.5 Billion monthly visitors
Twitter – 6.6 Billion monthly visitors

• How does each social media site work, and why exactly do people use it?

Youtube is a video-sharing platform. Those with accounts have their own channels. Baseline, they have the ability to post videos, comment on and like other posts, and participate in polls. Reaching certain numbers of subscribers unlocks new features for the content creator, such as live streaming and the community feature. Community posts are located on a tab on a creator’s channel where the creator can post text, images, and run polls. Based on your search and watch history along with your feedback and engagement on videos and your subscriptions, Youtube’s algorithm recommends videos that you would enjoy.
People use YouTube for many reasons. To create content, of course, is one. It could be for personally storing videos, or making educational and fun videos. Watching other people’s videos is what most come to youtube for. It could be for entertainment or to learn new things and skills and stay up to date on global events.
Facebook is primarily used to keep people connected with one another. You can add friends, and Facebook automatically searches for people you may know or may want to know. You can also create pages for your businesses and advertise yourself, message other people, voice and video chat, and play games. You can add hashtags to your post to categorize it, and view posts by certain hashtags.
Typically, people use the messenger feature a lot and make simple text, images, or video posts to keep others up to date on their lives or share interesting news and information.
Twitter is used for sharing ideas, opinions, jokes… anything you can do with the ability to post text. You can also post videos and images. Twitter has a heavy emphasis on trending topics. You can access a few of the top trending topics and hashtags on Twitter easily from the sidebar on the website. Hashtags are important if you want to reach a wider audience. One can follow an account to get more of their tweets shown to them, comment on tweets, direct message people, and ‘retweet’ posts, or repost them.
People use Twitter primarily to share their thoughts and feelings, opinions on certain relevant events, and discuss topics with other people. It’s also a place for humor and memes, showing your art and other projects, and other aspects of your life such as pets. Mainly, people come to Twitter to join discourse, however.

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

Demographics are data in referral to particular groups within a population. A demographic is a particular sector of a population. For example, you could say that a specific type of tea is popular with an older demographic.
Demographics are very important in social media if you want to effectively communicate with people. It’s impossible to have your post appeal to everyone equally, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be as effective. People don’t want to sift through for what they’re interested in. If you care about reaching people, you need to try to reach a target demographic to keep people interested and willing to return.

• What demographic stands out the most?

Out of the three social media I’ve listed above, Facebook’s demographic stands out to me. Facebook is certainly used by an older demographic. While the youngsters are busy bouncing around on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, Facebook has more of a focus on sharing world news and family and friend relations that adults may enjoy more. Other social media grab the attention of us teens and kids with more engaging, fast-paced content. However, the majority of Facebook users used to be teenagers a while back. According to data from monthly surveys issued by Facebook, the usage among teens has dropped from about 60% using it at least once a month in the spring of 2016 to a meager 27% in the fall of 2021. 27% is a shockingly low number for me, but it makes sense.

• On average, how much time do users spend on each social media site during a day, week, or month? 

On average, people spend 58 minutes a day on Facebook. Just a couple of minutes short of an entire hour!
On average, people spend 35 minutes a day on Twitter. Not as much as Facebook, but according to Oberlo, it’s the social media people spend the second most time on in the US.
On average, people spend 44 minutes a day on Youtube. It’s a little surprising to me, as Youtube focuses on more long-form content, compared to the microblogging aspects of Facebook. I expected longer, but I suppose the scroll is compelling.

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

Initially, I assumed that Twitter would be growing the fastest. Either Twitter or YouTube. Twitter seemed to keep getting more and more talked about, and FaceBook was talked about only on the topic of sketchy policies, questionable polls, and business. However, my gut reaction was wrong. Out of the three, Facebook, the one I ruled out of the question, was the fastest growing social media! Twitter came in second, with Youtube last. Facebook’s growth is beginning to plateau, however, according to the providers of information I used (study by Oberlo.) I think it is due to the abundance of other social media that serve similar, but different purposes, and due to the bad reputation Facebook has been garnering over the years.

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

The majority of Facebook users access the site using mobile devices at a whopping 98.5 percent!
Mobile is number one for Youtube as well at 63%.
In 2015, Twitter revealed that 80 percent of its users at the time also access the site from their mobile devices. It’s very clear that mobile reigns supreme for these social media.

RESOURCES vvvv

Top three social media sites in terms of traffic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-50-most-visited-websites-in-the-world/

Facebook demographic stats: https://fortune.com/2021/10/25/facebook-teens-usage-harm-studies/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20Facebook’s%20reign%20continues,it%20monthly%20in%20fall%202021.

Time spent on Facebook: https://famemass.com/time-spent-on-social-media/

Time spent on Twitter: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/average-time-spent-on-social-media#:~:text=At%2035%20minutes%20per%20day,300%2C000%20users%20in%20the%20US.

Time spent on Youtube: https://famemass.com/time-spent-on-social-media/

Growth stats Facebook: https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/#:~:text=1.%20Facebook%20has%202.91%20billion,most%20used%20social%20platform%20worldwide.

Facebook access stats: https://www.emarketer.com/content/more-than-3-5-youtube-video-views-occur-on-mobile-devices

Twitter access stats: https://www.statista.com/chart/1520/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/#:~:text=Twitter%20presented%20its%20latest%20results,on%20year%20to%20%24436%20million. [sadly, I struggled to find more updated info for 2019-2020.]

Youtube access stats: https://www.emarketer.com/content/more-than-3-5-youtube-video-views-occur-on-mobile-devices