Females and Teens Most Prolific – and Regretful – Social Media Users, finds Crowd Science Survey

Both Groups More Prone to Agree They Spend Too Much Time on Social Media; Greater Proportions of Teens Also Agree They Reveal Too Much Personal Info

December 1, 2009 - Silicon Valley, California – Three times as many females as males surveyed call social media like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace their “favorite leisure activity” and almost twice as many females over age 21 “believe they spend far too much time on online social media”, according to a survey of social media users conducted by Crowd Science (www.crowdscience.com) with its advanced research platform for online audience measurement.

Crowd Science found that:

- One-third (34%) of females vs. one-tenth (10%) of males who use social media said it was their favorite leisure activity.
- Over one-half (54%) of female study participants over age 21 who use social media vs. four-in-ten (38%) of males of the same age believe they spend far too much time on online social media.
- Over one-half more females than males over age 30 (45% vs. 29%) believe that most people are interested in what they have to say on social media.

In addition to females who use social media, younger participants in the study also felt they use social media too much – 46% of teens (17 and under) and 38% of 18-29 year-olds. The figure drops dramatically to 23% for the 30-39 demographic, and 12% for those 40+.

With almost half of teenaged participants admitting to over-use of social media, a similar proportion (44%) reported posting or saying things that they later regretted (vs. 30% for 18-29, 20% for 30-39 and 12% for 40+). Over a third of teens (35%) said they have used social media to reveal personal info that they wouldn’t have revealed otherwise (vs. 20% for 18-29, 8% for 30-39 and 5% for 40+). However, about a fifth of all participants under 30 (21% for teens, 19% for 18-29) said it would be “extremely damaging to my social status if I stopped or reduced my use of online social media.” Only 5% of 30-39 year-olds said this, and 3% of those 40 and over.

“The results of our study align with most people’s intuition about the usage of social media by teens and young adults,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “As the economy recovers and this generation starts interviewing for jobs, there will be some interesting years ahead as they have to deal with a new level of transparency around their past adventures (and misadventures). I’m definitely glad I made it out of school before Facebook landed.”

The Crowd Science study on social media users was conducted across more than 600,000 visitors to multiple websites within the Crowd Science open research network. The survey, targeting social media users age 13 and up, was conducted August 5-13, 2009.

About Crowd Science:
Crowd Science was formed by experts in online market research and audience measurement with a mission to “raise the bar” in the measurement of online populations. Their goal is to help web properties understand all facets of their audience, including the impact of marketing and outreach efforts on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, through rigorous, verifiable interactive research. The company has developed an advanced platform for audience measurement and real-time survey research.

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Grover Righter

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Crowd Science

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