Over half of UK youth using Twitter
More than half of young people in the UK are now using Twitter, according to the latest YAP (Young Adult Power) Media Index.
The quarterly survey of 540 young people across the UK has found that 53 per cent used Twitter in April, compared with 42 per cent at the end of 2011.
The Index showed that a third of 18-24 year-olds are now using the social media platform at least once a day.
The popularity of Google+ was also found to have grown in the last quarter, with 32 per cent of those surveyed using the platform in comparison with only one in five (20 per cent) at the start of 2012.
The Index also revealed nearly three in ten young people (29 per cent) have used social media in the last month to praise a product or service, while fewer than one in five (17 per cent) have used it to complain about a product.
Other findings include the continued dominance of Facebook on the youth market, with 97 per cent using the platform, and the integration of Skype video calling into Facebook causing numbers of young people using standalone Skype to plummet – nine per cent said they used it every day in April 2012, compared with 29 per cent using it every day in January.
Ed Heaver, director of Young Adult Power (YAP) said:
"Twitter, and to some extent Google+, are now embedded into the mainstream day-to-day activity of the nation’s youth and marketeers will ignore these channels at their peril. Our Index has also detected a sudden upsurge in the numbers of young people using Instagram, Pinterest and Flickr, services, which barely figured on the radar just three months ago.
"Yet with the integration of Skype video calling and the purchase of Instagram, Facebook has further acted to maintain its dominant position in the market."