Social Media Demographics

This article is a few months old, but it offers really interesting insight (and perhaps useful content for your final projects...if you are not presenting tonight) into the age groups of each social network. Believe it or not, the average social network user is now....37 years old.

Remember when it was just for college kids? Well, now the average age of social media users is actually OLDER than the coveted 18-35 year old advertising sweet spot.

The article has a bunch of interesting charts, but the easiest for me shows each network by average age, ranging from Bebo (avg age 28.4) to Classmates.com (avg age 44.9) and everywhere in between.

Interestingly, the 18-24 group is not currently the dominant demographic in ANY of the social networks analyzed in the article. Most networks are dominated by the 35-44 age group, which has become the most “social” demographic. This is the generation of people who were in their 20s as the Internet took off in the mid ‘90s. So, those 'early adopters' have stuck with it!

Facebook hits the same average age as all social networks (38.4). This does raise a question -- has the average age of social network users actually shifted, or is 35-44 just the average age of everyone with access to the Internet? It feels like social media is just that ubiquitous...is there really anyone who isn't on it yet?

http://tinyurl.com/yctss8r