Facebook's the Common Ground for Adults on Social Media

Despite its waning popularity among teenagers in the United States, Facebook remains the number 1 social media platform for those aged 18 and above. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of U.S. adults use the world’s largest social network, putting it miles ahead of second-placed Instagram in terms of reach.

Social media usage among U.S. adults has increased slightly over the past two years with Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter all improving their reach compared to a similar survey conducted in 2016. However, since the main purpose of social networking is to connect with other people, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Facebook is the common ground for adult social media users in the United States.

As the following chart illustrates, roughly 9 in 10 adult users of any other social network can also be found on Facebook while most other platforms share a much lower proportion of their respective audiences. Interestingly, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat appear to be particularly popular among social media enthusiasts as users of these three platforms tend to use several others as well.