Twitter, Facebook And LinkedIn: Age, Ethnicity And Gender Of The Major Social Networks [STUDY]

In previous articles we have looked closely at the latest findings from the non-partisan “fact tank” Pew Internet, and their recent study, Social Networking Sites And Our Lives.

In this final update, we’ll unveil the age, ethnicity and gender distribution of the users of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

Pew sampled 2,255 American adults on their use of social networking services between October 20 and November 28, 2010. There were 975 total users of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Age

As you might have expected business social network LinkedIn skews towards an older audience, with 55% of members aged between 36 and 65, and just 6% are 22 or younger.

Twitter leans quite a bit the other way, and whatever’s left of the MySpace audience seems to be mostly appealing to those aged 18-35.

Note that over 65s are still vastly under-represented throughout social media.

Race And Ethnicity

This one interests me as we’ve had other Pew studies in the past few months that have suggested the Twitter audience was predominately non-white. Accordingly to this latest data, 71% of Twitter is made up of white folks, although I’ll be damned if I can get any of those columns to add up. Maybe it was multiple choice?

Gender

From way back when many studies about gender distribution on Twitter have suggested that it was predominately female, and that this trend continues throughout social media, and Pew’s latest findings further support this, with women representing 64% of all users on Twitter. Facebook and MySpace are a little closer to the middle, but it’s still mostly the fairer sex in social networking.

Well, all except for LinkedIn, which flips the truism on its head with a 63% all-male turnout.

LinkedIn: Mostly white, older men. That’s a tagline you can take to the bank.

(Source: Pew Internet.)

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