Pew Research Center said on Thursday that social media use among American adults has blown up in the past decade with about two-thirds at the present on social networking sites.
Reuters reported that "the 65 percent of adults in the United States using social media is up from 46 percent in 2010 and just 7 percent in 2005, the year Pew began tracking usage."
Social media sites on the Internet have surged in popularity since the early 2000s, from Friendster and Myspace to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Google +, among others.
Moreover, social networking has evolved from people connecting to one another and "poking" each other to national leaders and law enforcement agencies using the sites to disseminate vital pieces of information.
Pew analyzed 27 national surveys of Americans, about 62,000 interviews among all adults conducted from March 2005 through July 2015 and about 47,000 interviews among adult Internet users for its findings on Thursday with margins of error were up to plus or minus 3.9 percent.
Pew claimed that the overall number of social network sites users has leveled off but there continues to be growth among some groups who were not early adopters which include older Americans. As a matter of fact, social media use among those 65 and older has more than tripled to 35 percent since 2010, when only 11 percent used social media.
Moreover, the research firm said those 18 to 29 years old are most likely to use social media and 90 percent of them use it in the present day compared to 78 percent in 2010. Too, Pew stated that usage among those aged 30 to 49 is up from 53 percent in 2010 to 77 percent this year.
Most social media users were women compared to men in 2009, however the difference has shrunk in recent years with 68 of women using social media in 2015 compared to 62 percent of men. Figures are up since 2010, when 42 percent of mean and 50 percent of women used social media.
In terms of social impacts of social media usage, Pew found out that: 1) Social networking sites are increasingly used to keep up with close social ties; 2) The average user of a social networking site has more close ties and is half as likely to be socially isolated as the average American; 3) Facebook users are more trusting than others; 4) Facebook users have more close relationships; 5) Internet users get more support from their social ties and Facebook users get the most support; 6) Facebook users are much more politically engaged than most people; 7) Facebook revives "dormant" relationships; and 8) MySpace users are more likely to be open to opposing points of view.
