A new survey conducted by social media agency We Are Social pegs Europe’s share of social media usage at 16 percent globally. The survey also reveals that 19 per cent of all internet users are based out of the continent. Almost 540 million people in Europe go online while 300m have an active social media presence. More than half of Europe’s social media users access social networks on their mobile devices.
Belgium, UK, France and the Netherlands together have 81 million Facebook users. The UK leads the pack, with almost 60 percent of the population on social media sites. In 2013, a different survey by the Office for National Statistics had declared the UK as a social networking leader in Europe.
The latest news comes on the heels of a European study claiming that teens are increasingly deserting Facebook in favor of Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter and other platforms. The main reason teens cited for this behavior was the presence of their parents and grandparents on the site. While they acknowledged Facebook’s creative and technical superiority over its peers, they admitted to feeling embarrassed to be on the same site as older folk. Among the other social media they used, Snapchat was reserved for close friends, Twitter for their larger social circle, WhatsApp for ‘quite close friends’ and Instagram for friends as well as people outside their social circles. However, Facebook remained the go-to network for some teens, in particular, to keep in touch with older family members and siblings away at university.
There are more than 1,800 million social media users in the world. Presently, US tops the list of social media users, followed by India and rounded off by Japan in third spot.
While people are abandoning older social media titans for new ones, an older audience of baby boomers has embraced social media enthusiastically!
Photo by Jer101jer licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
