Background

There have been a few studies conducted regarding social media accounts, and the average number of social media accounts. One was conducted for a GWI report, in which they used data provided by the top 50 social media websites to gather data on the average use of social media accounts per internet user. The global figure was 5.54 social media accounts per person, with an average of 2.28 active accounts per internet user. By age group, people 16-24 have an average of 6.55 accounts while people ages 55-64 have an average of 2.85. Strangely, it was found that the age group 25-34 are more active than the 16-24 age group, and appear to use facebook and linkedin more regularly. <http://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/internet-users-have-average-of-5-social-media-accounts>

Another study conducted by Statista claims that in 2012, nearly 63.1% of internet users also used social media networks. According to them, social media usage among people is expected to grow quite a lot in the coming years. In fact, nearly three fourths of the US population has at least one social media account and nearly 121.8 billion minutes are spent on social media monthly in the United States. This is quite a staggering statistic that will most likely continue to grow in the next few years. The production of mobile phones and apps for these social media websites have contributed significantly to social media usage and are expected to continue to do so. In fact, nearly 1.1 billion people are active monthly users of Facebook. It doesn’t take much to realize that this is only for Facebook, showing just how popular even one social media site can be. Sites like Facebook have helped shaped the evolution of social media by its marketing strategies that cause more and more people to fall into the social media craze. According to Statista, this primarily has to do with the ability to share user created content such as pictures, videos, and social games. Social media sites like Instagram have been created specifically for photos and videos. Each of these sites can appeal to a different social need for each person. Therefore it’s safe to say that social media will continue to increase as people try to find ways to share their ideas. This is supported by Statista graph which clearly shows a large increase from the years 2010 to 2016. Users jumped from a mere 970 million people to over 2.22 billion people over a relatively short time frame of 6 years. In just the next 3 years from 2016-2019, it is expected an additional half billion people will be using social media. Clearly, social media usage will increase in the future meaning people will be using more social media websites which will change the average number of social media accounts per person each year.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/

Other than these two studies, I had a difficult time finding studies regarding the average number of social media accounts per person in a certain block. There were no studies regarding number of social media accounts per grade that I could find. Therefore I’m including studies regarding social media accounts in general.  One conducted by the Global World Index finds that facebook is the most popular social media website in the world since it has the most active users who access it more than any other site. This study also finds that the majority of users use mobile platforms to access their accounts. In addition, it finds that the average user has five accounts and uses three per month.

<http://insight.globalwebindex.net/social-media-engagement-q1-2015>