Dispelling the Youth Myth – Five Useful Facebook Demographic Statistics

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Dispelling the Youth Myth – Five Useful Facebook Demographic Statistics

By Ken Burbary ⋅ January 13, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

Filed Under demographic, facebook, statistics

Facebook is huge. Depending on the day, it is the most visited site in the US (an accomplishment that Facebook recently achieved for the first time during Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years’ Day at the end of 2009). Yet despite all the Facebook success and its integration into mainstream culture, there are still some misunderstandings about the people that use facebook.

Just yesterday I was having a conversation with someone about Facebook in which a comment was made that “kids and younger people are the ones that really use Facebook”. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this perspective come up in conversation. When it does, I do my best to dispel the myth with the most recent demographics statistics and trends. Often times I’m asked to share that information afterwards. So, I’m writing this post to help avoid the need to explain myself over and over again, and instead direct people here. With that all out of the way, here is the most recent data (as of 1/1/10) on Facebook that you can use to enlighten yourself and others on just who uses Facebook and where they come from.

1) Facebook.com average user figures:

Average user has 130 friends on the site
Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
Average user is invited to 3 events per month
Average user is a member of 12 groups

Source: facebook.com statistics

2) Breakdown by country: Just over 70% of Facebook users come from outside the United States

Sources: checkfacebook.com and facebook.com statistics

3) Breakdown by population saturation: The % of country population that are active on Facebook

Sources: allfacebook.com

4) Breakdown of US users (gender and age):

As the chart above illustrates, the total US Facebook population is made up of millions of people across a range of ages groups. While young adults (18-25) lead the way with a combined ~27 million users, the 26-34 group is close behind with ~21 million users. According to the data above there a combined ~18 million people over the age of 45 active on Facebook. These are impressive user numbers from an older demographic that continue to grow.

Another look at the US users by age:

Sources: allfacebook.com

5) Facebook.com a top destination site for everyone, particularly the 65+ age group

Source: Nielsen 2010 Media Fact Sheet

I’ve aggregated data from several different sources for this post, and as you can see there is considerable participation on Facebook from all age groups. Hopefully you can use this information going forward to dispel the youth myth too.

http://twitter.com/LoriAGrim Lori Grim

There was a great joke on “30 Rock” about the aging of the Facebook population. One of the characters – a young woman in her early 20s – talks about going to MyFace for social networking. Another character asks her what MyFace is and the young woman responds that “it's where kids go now that old people have ruined Facebook” Ouch!
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http://twitter.com/toestor toestor

How is it dispelling the “youth myth”, if nearly two-thirds of all users are below the age of 34? Also: I would be curious to know what the frequency of use per age group is. And: How many of the “older” users are just on facbook to access their kids photos?
redsignalwebsitedesign

Facebook is a good platform for advertising,its not true only young people use it for their enjoyment,everything having good qualities but its uses may be good or bad,same case with the facebook.Actually now a days young people become engage with business i-e marketing managers,public relation officers,so they use facebook more in comparison to elders.
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Excellent post, yes it is true people have some misunderstanding about the use of face book and also the majority face book visitors are kids and youth.
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Interesting facts. I wasn't surprised by the age of users. I think that once we are married and have children we are all looking for ways to stay connected. I was surprised at how close male usage was to female usage. With the amazing new wave of social networking it can only gain popularity and usage.
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Thanks for the stats and charts. This is very helpful for learning and planning.
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http://blog-studenta.ru/ Poor Student

RT @mediawasp: Facebook demographics – http://is.gd/9rBVT
http://www.kingrpg.net/ KINGRPG

I like that you think. Thank you for share very much.
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http://www.seoconsult.co.uk Jack

Status and charts shows your hard work done on these and great content post……..
http://www.CampbellDuke.com Elizabeth Campbell Duke

Thank you for this information, Ken. I'd be interested to know not just the breakdown of Facebook users by age, but the percentage of people in each age group who are using Facebook. Is this information available anywhere?
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http://www.superiorpromos.com Pablo Edwards

Great stats to know. It is amazing to make the most out of Facebook when most people don't have a clue who is even on it!
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Off late people from india has started to use Face Book more than Orkut, hope it will be in Top 5 soon.
http://twitter.com/the925escape Escape The 9 To 5

I'm not too surprised by the stats regarding age, although, I bet if you come back in a year the 35-44 age bracket is going to jump!
Vikki Woods

Too bad the data didn't mention those over 65!! There are a lot of us!!!! We use it to book vacations, keep up with grandkids “doin's”, children scattered across the world, old….oops, I mean long time friends, learn new things every day, follow the news, read a newspaper (especially helpful for those of us living in remote areas without a national daily paperk, and more.
Luddite

This website cites “55 minutes/day/user” average, then “6 hrs a month per user” for active U.S. Internet universe. These numbers are wildly contradictory by roughly a factor of 4. Also, these statistics don't really dispel the youth myth. How many minutes per user in each age category — that has the potential to do so.
Tij

Facebook is part of the youth culture. Majority of the ACTIVE Facebook accounts are from youth even as young as 12 years old with Facebook accounts. They have time to waste while working adults do not have time to waste their time on Facebook. At least more than half of the middle school students all over the USA have facebook accounts. Social networking sites in general are part of the youth culture.

I have compared how often the use of Facebook by mature adults to the youth. The difference is incredible. Majority of the users online are youth because the mature adults are too busy with work, family and life. As the youth gets older and becomes an adult, he or she has less time for facebook.

I compared how often middle school students are online compared to high school students. The middle school students rule the social networking site. They can afford to be online all the time while high school students may have jobs to go to or after-school activities. This is because Facebook has all kinds of addicting games and online activities for the youth. As the person approaches college age and the person has to study, go to work, etc. less time is allocated to Facebook.

Any adult who spends all day in Facebook is basically unemployed and has nothing going in life but wasting it.

There may be many many open accounts for adults, but the MOST ACTIVE USERS of Facebook are the youth. So yes, kids and the youth are really the ones that use Facebook.
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Tony Lane

Your wrong. I have done several studys about Facebook to deside wether my company should advertise with them. The main source of users is between the ages of 18- 26. I wouldnt call those kids. They work and or have college. There are a small minority of middle school students that use the site.
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Rjhummer

Probably not otherwise it would be factored in. I’m guessing that its less than 1% if they didnt even mention it. It may seem liek there are a lot of you but compared to other demographics its probably not too much. No offense, I am just saying.
http://www.kenburbary.com Ken Burbary

Beth – Not sure I understand your question. FB says “50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day” but they don’t provide a detailed definition of what active means, and do not report on usage that way, at least no publicly.
http://www.kenburbary.com Ken Burbary

This discrepancy is due to comparing global averages with the stats from a specific country. Be careful when doing this, as it isn’t an apples to apples comparison. The global average data I provided is meant to be informational, but it’s best to dive into each country/region you may be targeting for a clear understanding of the FB behavior for that specific audience, as differences exist between markets.
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Aunahmed

There is no clarity in your use of the word “youth”.You seem to call the middle school students as the “youth”.Who are the adults,please specify the age group for each word.
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Al Schwartz

Is there any way of knowing (or even somewhat accurately estimating) what percentage of Facebookers are three-generation family members?u00a0 …u00a0 Are there any known four-generation family member Facebookers?n
Al Schwartz

Is there any way of knowing (or even somewhat accurately estimating) what percentage of Facebookers are three-generation family members?u00a0 …u00a0 Are there any known four-generation family member Facebookers?n
http://www.kenburbary.com Ken Burbary

No, not currently (unless you’re working at Facebook).
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Brucejo123

The majority of Facebook users are over 25 years of age. The reality is that Facebook is a product of commercial interests. The idea that it is youth culture is a bit of a motherhood statement about something that doesn’t really exist unless one says youth cultures. Even the term youth culture is about commercial interests as they try to create a model that works for selling product.
Brucejo123

Probably a bit of a waste of time as I suspect a lot of people cite wrong ages. what I am think of is the number of people who use the internet in predatory ways is supposed to be quite high. If this is the case than misquoted demographic data would be rife.

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