Social Media Usage: Global Statistics

Here at the TopUniversities.com team, we’re super excited to announce the launch of our very first ‘Students’ Online Usage: Global Market Trends Report’, which you can download (totally free!) here.

Based on a survey of students and prospective students around the world, the report looks at trends in internet, device and social media usage use across different age groups and regions.

For me, some of the most striking results were the statistics on social media usage. OK, so we all know social media is a big deal – but would you have guessed that in every region surveyed, more than half of respondents said they use five major social networks ‘all the time’?

The image above shows the percentage in each region who said they use Facebook all the time – for the statistics for Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest, get the full report here.

Other than the extremely high levels of social media usage reported, other results that caught my eye were:

• YouTube seems to be the most popular social network in Asia, Europe, and the US & Canada
• Respondents in Africa generally reported lower social media usage – with the exception of Facebook
• Respondents in Latin America reported the highest usage across nearly all networks (just beaten on Pinterest by the US & Canada)

What else did we find out? Well, there were some clear differences in social media usage depending on age, and also some interesting trends once we started comparing individual countries. And my personal favorite part of the report was when we asked respondents why they use social networks… But that’s for another blog post!

Stay tuned for more key findings, or download the full (2014) report now.