Males use more social networks than females
Despite conventional wisdom about women’s greater sociability online, male internet users in Canada are more likely to use a variety of social media platforms than their female counterparts. Two major exceptions, though, are Facebook and Pinterest, both of which tilt toward women.
Facebook, of course, is broadly popular in the country, with nearly eight in 10 daily or every-other-day internet users in Canada reporting they use Facebook at least weekly, according to November 2014 research from UM. Weekly Facebook usage was 5 percentage points higher among women than among men, but still, more than three in four male internet users were Facebook users. Younger people were also more likely to report using the social network, but even among web users ages 45 to 54, 64% used Facebook weekly. eMarketer estimates that among monthly internet users in Canada, 63.0% used Facebook at least once per month last year. The figure is lower than UM’s, probably due to its inclusion of people who use the internet less frequently than once every two days, as well as its inclusion of internet users over age 54.
Pinterest, the other social network with higher penetration among women than men, attracted 25% of the former group, vs. just 12% of male internet users in Canada. There was less variation in age among Pinterest users, with penetration about equal across age groups between 16 and 44, but dropping off among those 45 and older.
Twitter, meanwhile, skewed male. One-third of male internet users in Canada used Twitter weekly, compared with 23% of their female counterparts. Like Pinterest, Twitter had approximately equal popularity among all respondents younger than 45, at which point usage dropped off considerably. eMarketer estimates that 20.8% of monthly internet users in Canada used Twitter at least once per month last year.
According to UM, Instagram was the No. 3 social network among all respondents, with equal male and female populations but a significant younger skew. LinkedIn rounded out the top five, and was 8 percentage points more likely to be used by men than women. It also appealed most to internet users ages 25 to 44.
- See more at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/How-Social-Usage-Varies-Between-Men-Women-Canada/1012169/3#sthash.RuYPN5tf.dpuf
