115 Must Know Facts about Social Media [Infographic]

Posted on October 5, 2016   1:02 pm by admin

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? Only about a decade ago, for most people the answer was: get out of bed, get dressed, have a cup of coffee, and maybe turn on the radio or TV to see what’s new in the world. Well, those days are long gone. For more and more people nowadays (myself included!), the first thing to do in the morning is reach for our smartphone, tablet, or laptop and check what’s new in the world of social media.

I don’t know when or how this kind of behavior became the norm, but all I know is that if I don’t take a quick glance at all of my social media accounts first thing in the morning, for the rest of the day I’ll feel like I went out without brushing my teeth or put on two different shoes. The simple fact is that social media has become an integral part of modern life, and people from all walks of life, both young and old, believe maintaining  a social media presence is non-negotiable if you want to feel accomplished.

While the influence of social media is plainly obvious everywhere around us, there are many interesting facts about social media that not a lot of people know about. We have put together a massive treasure trove full of fun facts here for you today. So, read along and take a look at the social media statistics infographic to learn a thing or two about how all of this online interaction can work for you. You may already know a few of the key points here, but there should be plenty of new information that you had never even considered before.

Social Media: Global Usage

Believe it  or not, it has only been about ten years since social media really became a big thing. Yes, it was around for a while before then in one way or another, but it just wasn’t on the same scale as we see today. Now in 2016, almost one third of the world’s population is on social media – 31% to be exact. The highest usage comes from North and South America, at 59% and 50% of the populations respectively.

The regions with the lowest usage of social media and therefore the biggest areas for potential growth for social media demographics in the years to come, are in Central and South Asia, and Africa. In these regions, only around 10% or less of the population say that they do not use any kind of social media. This is predicted to change fairly rapidly as access to internet and smartphones increases, so I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the future it becomes impossible to find a single person on the planet who’s not on social media.

Still, as access to internet services grows social media use does not increase at the same rate. From 2014 to 2016, the percentage of the world population with internet access grew from 35% to 46%. During this same period, the number of people who use social media only grew from 26% to 31%. There could be a number of reasons for this. For example, this could include the number of people who had previously used social media and have now abandoned it, or it could mean that only half of new internet users are interested in social media. It is most likely that it is a mix of the two examples given.

Most Popular Platforms

One of the best social media facts to look at to gain a better understanding of which social media platform is currently the most popular, is the percentage of users who login/view their page daily. As you probably might have guessed already, Facebook is winning this particular battle right now with 70% of its users coming back every day. Instagram is also doing very well, with over half (59%) of its users returning on a daily basis. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest make up the rest of the top five for this metric with 38%, 27%, and 22% respectively.

Facebook in Numbers

We had to give Facebook statistics its own section here, not only because it’s my personal favorite social media site, but because they are simply dominating the social media industry at the moment. You saw above and in the infographic that Facebook is winning when it comes down to how many of its users are returning to the site every day, but there is a lot more to know.

At the time of making this infographic, Facebook had around 1.6 billion active users from all around the world. This number only includes users who have been active within the past month and therefore does not include the millions of people who no longer use the service.

Due to the fact that Facebook has so many users on a truly global scale, it has made the company responsible for almost a quarter (22%) of mobile internet advertising revenue. With all other aspects considered, this makes the company worth over 300 billion dollars. This is about 20 times more than the platform in second place for revenue, LinkedIn, and about 100 times more than Instagram.

Social Media & The World of Business

The ways in which people talk about and interact with your business through social media can make or break you. One mistake, one awkward or ill-timed post could change your image from fan favorite one day to the target of endless jokes the next day. You could have a million followers who love you or you could have a lonely little page with a few dozen people who just stumbled across it, so don’t underestimate the power of social media for business.

So, when it comes down to marketing and creating a social media strategy for your business where should you be concentrating your efforts? Well, Facebook for a start. Everyone who is attempting to sell a product or otherwise increase brand awareness in 2016 needs to be on Facebook. It is not only the biggest platform with the most active users on a daily basis, but it is also the leader when it comes to influencing purchase decisions.

Facebook is the winner from a pure sales perspective with 37% of people reporting that this platform influenced their decision to purchase. Twitter came in second at 32%, and Pinterest was third at 19%.

However, we compiled more than just that while making this infographic, and we found that Facebook was not the king when it came to certain other marketing statistics. For example, Twitter is the winner when it comes to purchase reminders, product recommendations, and product discovery.

 

Negative Social Media Statistics

Have you ever logged into your Facebook account just to quickly check if there’s anything new, and next thing you know, it’s been three hours and you haven’t moved from the chair not once? Almost every social media user has experienced these moment where you start to wonder if you might just actually be addicted to social media. It is too early to tell exactly what long-term impacts that the high amount of social media use will bring, but there are already a few statistics that should cause alarm.

For example, 58% of smartphone users said that they feel compelled to check on their phone at least once every hour. This is probably not as bad as it initially sounds though, as our phones have replaced watches and other things in our life. Therefore a chunk of that time is used checking to see what the time is 

Now for a statistic that has very little justification, half of all the teenagers in the US admit that they are addicted to some kind of mobile device, usually a smartphone. These are real teenagers who are freely admitting this and not just parents reporting what they feel about their kids’ phone usage, which makes it doubly worrisome.

 

All Hail Video: YouTube Facts & Stats

Is there anything YouTube can’t do? It’s a video sharing site, it’s a place to rent movies and yes, it is a social media platform too. Most people use YouTube from time to time but for teens and young adults it is a must. It was reported that 85% of this demographic report that they watch videos on YouTube regularly.

In a survey that we used while putting together this infographic, we found that YouTube came in just behind Facebook when it came to influencing purchase decisions. 27% of people reported that YouTube had influenced their purchase, compared to 31% who cited Facebook.

Oh, and did you know that YouTube receives about 400 hours of new video uploads for every minute of the day? This means it would literally take you lifetimes to watch all videos on YouTube!

We could go on for hours here about how much we learned during our endless research but we put it all into the infographic so you can see it presented much better in a more visual format. So if you are interested in this type of information, or you just want to impress your friends with your knowledge of social media statistics, then make sure you don’t miss the full graphic.

 

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