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Facebook continues to dominate the social networking space, with some 71 percent of online adults now users of the social media site, a slight increase from 67 percent in late 2012, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
Some 42 percent of online adults now use multiple social networking sites. In addition, Instagram users are nearly as likely as Facebook users to check in daily to the site, the report found. For those who use only one social networking site (36 percent), Facebook is typically—though not always—the platform of choice.
Among those who only use one major social networking platform, 84 percent say that Facebook is the single site that they frequent. However, other single platform social networking site users have adopted a site other than Facebook as their platform of choice.
Among those who use just one social networking site, 8 percent use LinkedIn, 4 percent use Pinterest, and 2 percent each said that Instagram or Twitter is their sole social networking site.
In addition to being the most commonly used social networking platform of the five that were measured, Facebook also had high levels of engagement among its users, with 63 percent of Facebook users visiting the site at least once a day and 40 percent doing so multiple times throughout the day.
In comparison, some 57 percent of Instagram users visit the site at least once a day (with 35 percent doing so multiple times per day), and 46 percent of Twitter users are daily visitors (with 29 percent visiting multiple times per day).
The report found Twitter and Instagram have particular appeal to younger adults, urban dwellers and non-Whites, and there is substantial overlap between Twitter and Instagram user bases.
“While Facebook is popular across a diverse mix of demographic groups, other sites have developed their own unique demographic user profiles,” the report said. “For example, Pinterest holds particular appeal to female users (women are four times as likely as men to be Pinterest users), and LinkedIn is especially popular among college graduates and Internet users in higher income households.”
Despite the popularity of social media sites and the well-publicized incidents of users’ accounts being hacked, almost three in 10 users said their social media accounts had been hacked, and for more than half, the hacking occurred in 2013, according to a November study by Harris Interactive.
The Harris survey turned up another indicator of a possible disconnect between widespread acceptance of individual responsibility for online safety and actual behavior, with results indicating that roughly one in five people have never changed the privacy settings on their social media accounts.