UPDATED 07:14 EDT / JANUARY 12 2015

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg NEWS

Facebook is still king of social media—for now

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

The latest social media study from the Pew Research Center shows that Facebook Inc. is still on top by a large margin, but its growth has slowed to a crawl as other services take up the slack.

Social Media Update 2014 shows that Facebook usage still sits at 71 percent of American adults who use this internet. This is the same number as the previous year, but the study also shows that the people belonging to that 71 percent use Facebook more frequently than before.

“If you look at any line in the post office and see what people are doing on their phones, they’re frequently on Facebook,” said Nicole Ellison, a University of Michigan professor and one of the key researchers behind the study. “Facebook has become kind of a daily practice for many people. It’s the default social site.”

 

Facebook is getting older

 

The Pew Research Center’s study also points out that for the first time ever, over half of internet-using adults over the age of 65 are using Facebook.  Ellison offers the desire to stay in contact with family as one explanation for the growth in older users.

“Their children might say ‘Mom, did you see the photos of the kids I posted on Facebook?’ and that’s when they get on,” said Ellison.

As more seniors join Facebook and young adults and teens move to services like Instagram and WhatsApp, the social network’s user base is aging. Of course, since Facebook owns both Instagram and WhatsApp, the shift in user demographics seems like a win-win. According to the study, over half of young adults between 18 to 29 use Instagram.

While Facebook is still on top in terms of raw numbers, other services have seen a significant amount of growth over the last year. Twitter saw its user base grow from 18 percent of adults in 2013 to 23 percent last year.

Although this growth seems promising for the microblog service, the study also showed that the actual usage of Twitter decreased, with fewer of its registered users visiting the site frequently.

Meanwhile, professional networking site LinkedIn has grown to a usage of 50 percent among college-educated adults, which partly explains the site’s successes in 2014.


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