Over half UK pensioners among 37.4m UK adults on Facebook - survey claims
A new survey published today claims to finally lay to rest the debate about just how many of us in the UK use social networks. According to the findings, 37.4m UK adults use Facebook regularly and 15.5m UK adults are on Twitter.
The research was carried out by PR and social media agency Umpf and survey company Your Say Pays. They took responses from around 2,400 UK adults.
If spreadsheets are your thing, you can see the full findings here and if you scroll down this page you'll find an infographic, created by Vapour, to visualise the data.
Having extrapolated the responses, Umpf says some of the key findings are that 32.1 million UK adults use YouTube regularly, 7.9m are on LinkedIn and 6.7m use Flickr.
Women, according to the survey, were more likely to have active Facebook accounts but men were more likely to use LinkedIn and location-based platforms such as Foursquare to connect with others.
While social networks are often considered the preserve of the young, this is not strictly true if the research is to be believed.
It claims that more than half of all pensionable UK adults are on Facebook, with more than a third also using YouTube on a regular basis.
Umpf's Jon Priestley said: “Our research clearly shows how endemic social media use is in the UK, with clear adoption of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter amongst all age groups. With more than half of all over 65s using Facebook regularly, social media is clearly no longer the preserve of the tech-savvy under 30s.
“The social media landscape is changing rapidly and gender divides are starting to become apparent, with men clearly favouring YouTube and LinkedIn, but women opting to use Facebook as their chosen medium of communication.
“Our research clearly shows how geography is playing a key role in social media adoption, with distinct geographical areas beginning to favour different social media platforms to communicate with their networks.”