Who uses social media?

It's no secret that social media has had a staggering impact on the world since its advent; simply put, it has completely revamped the popularly conceived notion of "connecting" and interacting with one another, as well as how we share information with one another, and in many ways, how we perceive the world. As such, social media has had subsequent effects on society and popular culture, especially in the Western world.

To describe social media in such grandiose terms, though, is - in some sense - to take the "easy way out." An important question which is rarely addressed with regards to the profound impact that social media has had on society at large is, "Who has social media affected?"

In other words, who are the people who frequently use social media? How many people has it affected? If we were to posit that social media has had such a drastic impact on society, then it should follow that the people who make up society have felt the effects of social media as well.

An article on eMarketer published last year claims that the reach of social networking is increasing exponentially by year. According to the report cited in the article, "the number of internet users who use a social network site via any device at least once per month" has increased by 13.4% since last year; the number now stands at around 1.97 billion people across the globe, or around one in four people on earth. The report further claims that the number could climb as high as 2.55 billion people by 2017.

The same report also lays claim that emerging markets in Asia and Africa will be "huge drivers of social user growth" in coming years, and that the reach of social networking has been increasing globally since at least 2011, throughout dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

An infographic on Mashable, which charts research carried out by the Pew Research Center, provides a "breakdown" of the most well-represented demographics with regards to social media usage. Some of the most notable statistics are as follows: 

• The highest percentage of social media usage occurs among the youngest demographic (18-29 year olds) with 83%, with less usage as age increases (77% among 30-49 year olds, 52% among 50-64 year olds, etc.)
• Social media usage among women is 9% higher than that among men, with 71% and 62% respectively
• People living in cities are responsible for the highest percentage of social media activity by population density, with 70%, as compared with suburbanites with 67% and those living in rural areas with 61%

The most common demographics are 18-29 year olds, those earning a household income of $30,000 or greater, city people, college students, and white people.

The question of whether social media is "the same" for all of these demographics is directly related to the question of which social media platform is being discussed. The same Mashable infographic says 67% of online adults are Facebook users (Facebook is arguably the most popular social media platform), whereas only 6% of online adults are Tumblr users. Elsewhere, the infographic shows that Instagram, for example, is most appealing to African-Americans, Hispanics, urban residents, 18-29 year olds, and women, whereas Pinterest is most appealing to rural residents, women, white people, people with some level of college education or higher, and people of middle or higher income. Clearly, the extent of ones exposure to social media - the expanse of ones "social mediasphere" - differs from demographic to demographic, and is rarely, if ever, consistent across the board. Where a transcendentally popular platform like Facebook has universal appeal to both younger and older people (and perhaps has had such broad and widely-felt impact as a result of this), "smaller" platforms such as Pinterest take more of a niche approach to social networking.

I am of the opinion that a social media platform's importance correlates, at least to some extent, to its reach or the size of its audience. We are continued witnesses of a popular example of this, with arguably the two most impactful and influential platforms to emerge following the "social media boom" of the mid 2000s: Facebook and Twitter. They also happen to have the greatest amount of users of any social network, with 1.28 billion users active monthly (as of March 2014) and 274 million users active monthly (as of July 2014), respectively. Their importance can only be measured by their immense bearing on popular culture, and their default roles as "lenses" through which people continue to study social media's growing impact on society.

Links:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-Around-World/1009976
http://mashable.com/2013/04/12/social-media-demographic-breakdown/