Young Women the Queens of social media in Australia
Social media has taken the world by storm over the past decade and a half led by the likes of Facebook (founded in 2004), Twitter (2006), Google+ (2011), Instagram (2010), LinkedIn (2003), YouTube (2005), WhatsApp (2009) and Tumblr (2007). All eight of these leading social media networks claim well over 100 million monthly active users[1].
As the influence of social media networks grow the time spent interacting with social media displaces time spent with traditional forms of media including TV, radio, magazines, newspapers and radio.
New research investigating the time Australians spend with social media reveals young women are easily the most prolific users of all types of social media. The average Australian aged 14-+ spends almost six hours per week on social media; and women aged 14-24 years old now spend a staggering 822 minutes per week using social media of one type or another. This is an average of almost two hours per day.
Women in general spend an average of 391 minutes per week on social media which is close to two hours more per week than the 287 minutes per week spent by men.
The chart below illustrates that women of all ages are spending more time on social media than their similarly aged male peers. The largest differences are when comparing younger women to younger men.
Women aged 14-24 spend nearly five hours, or 294 minutes, more time on social media per week than men aged 14-24. The difference is also stark for women aged 25-34 who spend 183 minutes more time on social media per week than men aged 25-34.
Social media use* – total minutes in an average week by Gender & Age
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source: Interviews with 7,001 Australians aged 14+ (Oct. 2017 – Mar. 2018). *Social media includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan, says social media is an increasingly important way to reach hard to engage consumers and its vital advertisers understand how a user’s social media use interacts with their other habits and interests:
“New research from Roy Morgan exploring how Australians engage with different types of social media reveals some interesting insights. Young women in Australia spend an average of nearly two hours a day on social media compared to just over an hour for similarly aged young men.
“In fact women of all ages spend more time on social media than men of the same age. On average Australian women spend 56 minutes per day on social media compared to 41 minutes per day for men. Over the course of a week this equates to a difference of almost two hours.
“Of course social media isn’t just one big market but rather differentiated by a large variety of overlapping and varied networks that appeal to different aspects of a user’s experience. Different Australians engage with social media in their own way and for their own reasons.
“Digging into the Roy Morgan data allows in-depth analysis of what characterises a typical user of social media networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, WhatsApp, MeetUp, Reddit, Google Hangouts, Yahoo7 Messenger & Answers, Skype, WordPress, Flickr, Imgur, Pinterest, Messenger, Snapchat, Viber, WeChat and Yammer.
“In combination with the richness of other Roy Morgan Single Source data the time spent with social media information can be used to create an in-depth understanding of your intended communication targets across a wide variety of important demographics.
“The increasing centrality of social networks to our way of life shows no sign of receding anytime soon. Only the qualitative and quantitative analysis available via the Roy Morgan Single Source data integrated with psychographic segmentation tools like Helix Personas gives businesses looking for an edge the ability to unlock the valuable secrets to be found in ‘big data’.”
View Roy Morgan’s latest Time Spent with Media Reports, Social Media Participation in Australia Report, and detailed Internet website visitor profiles here. For other reports and profiles visit the Roy Morgan Online Store.
1. Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/).
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Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
