A recent report released by comScore has revealed that the United States isn’t into social networking as much you might think. Yes, even though whenever you walk by a coworker’s computer you can spy Facebook opened in a tab, or anytime you go into a heavily populated area, it seems everyone is tweeting or Instagramming or Facebooking on their phone. Though social networking is the most popular online activity in the world, and accounts for 1 in 5 minutes spent online, and reaches 82% of the world’s Internet population, somehow, the U.S. doesn’t care as much as your eyes and these stats would have you believe. Israel cares, though, deeply so, as they are far and away the world’s biggest social networking addicts by a fairly large margin.
The report, released yesterday, takes a look at social networking during the month of October of this year, and finds that the United States doesn’t even crack the top ten most engaged social networking markets. That isn’t to say that the U.S. doesn’t have more people using a social network than other markets, but it does account for amount of time spent social networking.
Unexpectedly, the U.S. doesn’t fall into the top ten, trailing even Canada, the place we Americans say we’re from when traveling abroad.
Ranked by number of hours dumped into social networking by region, Latin America stands at the top of the mountain, followed by Europe, North America, while Asia Pacific brings up the rear.
As seen above, the report also found that females in every region used social networks much more than males, with Asia Pacific being the region with the smallest gap between usage.
A theory as to why the U.S. isn’t sitting atop these rankings — something that we should probably be proud we’re not — is because we’ve had social networks roughly forever, and the U.S. social networking honeymoon period is over, though other regions in the world may still be experiencing their own.
So, good work, United States, for being totally obsessed with social networking, but only in short, intermittent bursts that aren’t enough to claim the top spot of obsession.
(comScore via The Next Web)
- Luckily, social media won’t be ruining the collective minds of the U.S. as much
- Although 1 in 6 job seekers got their job from a social network
- Even though the world has many weird ones, like this one for intestinal bacteria
