The percentage of adults using social-networking sites has risen dramatically in recent years, reports the Pew Internet and American Life Project. More than 35 percent of the adults the organization surveyed last year report having a profile at one or more social-network sites — up from just eight percent in 2005.
“Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75 percent of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just seven percent of adults 65 and older,” noted Pew Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart. “At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.”
Gauging Popularity
Adults — which make up a larger portion of the U.S. population than teens — represent the bulk of users of social-networking Web sites, Lenhart said. On the other hand, social-network users are more likely to be students.
According to Lenhart, 68 percent of full-time students and 71 percent of part-time students have a social-network profile. By contrast, just 28 percent of adults who are not students indicated that they use social networks.
“Overall, personal use of social networks seems to be more prevalent than professional use of networks, both in the orientation of the networks that adults choose to use as well as the reasons they give for using the applications,” Lenhart said. “Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks to connect with people they already know.”
Among survey respondents, the most popular social-networking sites were MySpace (50 percent), Facebook (22 percent), LinkedIn (six percent), Yahoo (two percent), YouTube (one percent), and Classmates.com (one percent). MySpace users are more likely to be women, Hispanic or black, and to have a high-school education or some experience with college, Lenhart said. By contrast, Facebook users are more likely to be men…