65% of Adults Now Use Social Networks

Damon Poeter (@dpoeter) writes in PCMag.com (@PCMag) that the percentage of adult Internet users using sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is now 65%, up from 61% a year ago, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center (@pewinternet & @pewresearch).

Accounting for the percentage of adults who don't use the Internet at all, that still means that half of all Americans now use social networking sites, Pew researchers say.

The number of Americans using such sites has exploded since 2005, when Pew found that just 8% of Internet users, or about 5% of all adult Americans, said they did. The percentage of Internet users saying they use social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, when 29% of respondents said they were using them, according to the Pew survey.

Pew reports that women aged 18 to 29 are the most voracious users of social networking sites, with 89% of Internet users in that group participating in such sites and 69% of them reporting that they do so daily. Accounting for all age groups, 69% of adult women using the Internet say they’re social networkers as compared with 60% of men.