65% Of Online Adults Use Social Networking Sites

Does that title surprise you? It sure surprised me. The title is from a research study conducted by the Pew Research Center. The study was released on August 26, 2011, and the title highlights their current findings of how online adults use their internet service.

Here is the top level summary of what they found:

Two-thirds of adult internet users (65%) now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. That’s more than double the percentage that reported social networking site usage in 2008 (29%). And for the first time in Pew Internet surveys it means that half of all adults (50%) use social networking sites. The pace with which new users have flocked to social networking sites has been staggering; when we first asked about social networking sites in February of  2005, just 8% of internet users – or 5% of all adults – said they used them.

Only email and search engines are used more frequently than social networking tools.

Looking at usage on a typical day, 43% of online adults use social networking, up from 38% a year ago and just 13% in 2008. Out of all the “daily” online activities that we ask about, only email (which 61% of internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (which 59% use on a typical day) are used more frequently than social networking tools.

If you want to see the report for yourself click HERE. You can read it online or download a PDF copy for reading offline.