IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v10y2020i1p27-d335856.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Use of Social Media Platforms among Adults in the United States—Behavior on Social Media

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Hruska

    (Department of Economics, University of Hradec Kralove, 500 03 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic)

  • Petra Maresova

    (Department of Economics, University of Hradec Kralove, 500 03 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic)

Abstract

Social media has evolved over the last decade to become an important driver for acquiring and spreading information in different domains such as business, entertainment, crisis management, and politics. The increasing popularity of social media raises a number of questions regarding why we use it so much and what aspects influence this activity. What about gender? What about education, income, age or social status? This paper answers some of these questions using statistical analyses and by dividing overall social media use into selected social media, i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitter. The analysis used a dataset that contains information related to 2002 respondents from the U.S. and their social media activity. The results show that people with high household incomes and high education use social media the most. As age increases, social media use decreases, while bigger household income means that social media are used more. Overall, understanding where and at what frequency users are on social media can be a key competitive advantage. When using social networks correctly for marketing, companies can significantly improve their brand awareness, customer satisfaction, quality, reach, and profit.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Hruska & Petra Maresova, 2020. "Use of Social Media Platforms among Adults in the United States—Behavior on Social Media," Societies, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:10:y:2020:i:1:p:27-:d:335856
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/10/1/27/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/10/1/27/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bento, Marisa & Martinez, Luisa M. & Martinez, Luis F., 2018. "Brand engagement and search for brands on social media: Comparing Generations X and Y in Portugal," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 234-241.
    2. Kaplan, Andreas M. & Haenlein, Michael, 2010. "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 59-68, January.
    3. Mark Granovetter, 2005. "The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 33-50, Winter.
    4. Lee, In, 2018. "Social media analytics for enterprises: Typology, methods, and processes," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 199-210.
    5. José Balsa-Barreiro & Aymeric Vié & Alfredo J. Morales & Manuel Cebrián, 2020. "Deglobalization in a hyper-connected world," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-4, December.
    6. Shareef, Mahmud Akhter & Mukerji, Bhasker & Dwivedi, Yogesh K. & Rana, Nripendra P. & Islam, Rubina, 2019. "Social media marketing: Comparative effect of advertisement sources," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 58-69.
    7. Saboo, Alok R. & Kumar, V. & Ramani, Girish, 2016. "Evaluating the impact of social media activities on human brand sales," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 524-541.
    8. C. A. Hidalgo & B. Klinger & A. -L. Barabasi & R. Hausmann, 2007. "The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations," Papers 0708.2090, arXiv.org.
    9. Steven H. Strogatz, 2001. "Exploring complex networks," Nature, Nature, vol. 410(6825), pages 268-276, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sharifah Sharar Aldalbahi & Abdulmohsen Saud Albesher, 2023. "Young Saudis’ Evaluations and Perceptions of Privacy in Digital Communities: The Case of WhatsApp and Telegram," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-17, July.
    2. Yap Yew Shen & Nurul Hanis Ramzi & Divya Gopinath, 2022. "Personality Traits and Sociodemographic Factors Associated with the Use of E-Cigarettes, Waterpipe and Conventional Cigarettes among Medical University Students," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-11, June.
    3. Zaring, Caitlin & Jensen, Kimberly & Rihn, Alicia & Morgan, Mark & Eckelkamp, Elizabeth, 2023. "A Profile of Tennessee Farmstead Milk Consumers," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 54(3), November.
    4. Paul S. F. Yip & Edward Pinkney, 2022. "Social media and suicide in social movements: a case study in Hong Kong," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1023-1040, May.
    5. Mohammed Arshad Khan & Faisal Alhathal & Shahid Alam & Syed Mohd Minhaj, 2023. "Importance of Social Networking Sites and Determining Its Impact on Brand Image and Online Shopping: An Empirical Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-22, March.
    6. Matthew Asare & Beth A. Lanning & Sher Isada & Tiffany Rose & Hadii M. Mamudu, 2021. "Feasibility of Utilizing Social Media to Promote HPV Self-Collected Sampling among Medically Underserved Women in a Rural Southern City in the United States (U.S.)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(20), pages 1-12, October.
    7. Kaline Pessoa & Cícero Luciano Alves Costa & Ana Cláudia Coelho & Ana Bastos & Isilda Rodrigues, 2023. "Use of Instagram as a Resource for the Adoption of Behaviors Related to Health and Well-Being of Young College Students: Associations between Use Profile and Sociodemographic Variables—A Cross-Section," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-18, February.
    8. Shuchi Gupta & Nishad Nawaz & Abhishek Tripathi & Saqib Muneer & Naveed Ahmad, 2021. "Using Social Media as a Medium for CSR Communication, to Induce Consumer–Brand Relationship in the Banking Sector of a Developing Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-16, March.
    9. Ganli Liao & Yi Li & Qichao Zhang & Miaomiao Li, 2022. "Effects of Social Media Usage on Job Crafting for Female Employees during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-20, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. José Balsa-Barreiro & Aymeric Vié & Alfredo J. Morales & Manuel Cebrián, 2020. "Deglobalization in a hyper-connected world," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 1-4, December.
    2. Abdulla H. Fetais & Raed S. Algharabat & Abdullah Aljafari & Nripendra P. Rana, 2023. "Do Social Media Marketing Activities Improve Brand Loyalty? An Empirical Study on Luxury Fashion Brands," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 795-817, April.
    3. Zobi Khan & Yongzhong Yang & Mohsin Shafi & Ruo Yang, 2019. "Role of Social Media Marketing Activities (SMMAs) in Apparel Brands Customer Response: A Moderated Mediation Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Zhepeng Li & Xiao Fang & Xue Bai & Olivia R. Liu Sheng, 2017. "Utility-Based Link Recommendation for Online Social Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(6), pages 1938-1952, June.
    5. van Esch, Patrick & Black, J. Stewart, 2019. "Factors that influence new generation candidates to engage with and complete digital, AI-enabled recruiting," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 729-739.
    6. Dima Sawaftah & Ahmad Aljarah & Eva Lahuerta-Otero, 2021. "Power Brand Defense Up, My Friend! Stimulating Brand Defense through Digital Content Marketing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-17, September.
    7. Daniel Straulino & Mattie Landman & Neave O'Clery, 2020. "A bi-directional approach to comparing the modular structure of networks," Papers 2010.06568, arXiv.org.
    8. Runjie Xu & Chuanmin Mi & Rafal Mierzwiak & Runyu Meng, 2019. "Complex Network Construction of Internet Financial risk," Papers 1904.06640, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2019.
    9. Lin, Hsin-Chen & Swarna, Hepsi & Bruning, Patrick F., 2017. "Taking a global view on brand post popularity: Six social media brand post practices for global markets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 621-633.
    10. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Blöchl, Florian & Brück, Tilman & Theis, Fabian J., 2011. "The Heckscher-Ohlin model and the network structure of international trade," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 135-145, April.
    11. Xi Chen & Chunlan Jiao & Ran Ji & Yu Li, 2021. "Examining Customer Motivation and Its Impact on Customer Engagement Behavior in Social Media: The Mediating Effect of Brand Experience," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.
    12. Xiaohua Zeng & Liyuan Wei, 2013. "Social Ties and User Content Generation: Evidence from Flickr," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 71-87, March.
    13. Marchand, André & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten & Flemming, Jan, 2021. "Social media resources and capabilities as strategic determinants of social media performance," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 549-571.
    14. Xu, Runjie & Mi, Chuanmin & Mierzwiak, Rafał & Meng, Runyu, 2020. "Complex network construction of Internet finance risk," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 540(C).
    15. Chae, Bongsug (Kevin) & McHaney, Roger & Sheu, Chwen, 2020. "Exploring social media use in B2B supply chain operations," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 73-84.
    16. Tiwary, Nishant Kumar & Kumar, Rishi Kant & Sarraf, Shagun & Kumar, Prashant & Rana, Nripendra P., 2021. "Impact assessment of social media usage in B2B marketing: A review of the literature and a way forward," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 121-139.
    17. Shakeel ul Rehman & Rafia Gulzar & Wajeeha Aslam, 2022. "Developing the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) through Social Media (SM): The Modern Marketing Communication Approach," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.
    18. Jacobson, Jenna & Gruzd, Anatoliy & Hernández-García, à ngel, 2020. "Social media marketing: Who is watching the watchers?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    19. Arora, Anuja & Bansal, Shivam & Kandpal, Chandrashekhar & Aswani, Reema & Dwivedi, Yogesh, 2019. "Measuring social media influencer index- insights from facebook, Twitter and Instagram," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 86-101.
    20. Mithun S. Ullal & Iqbal Thonse Hawaldar & Rashmi Soni & Mohammed Nadeem, 2021. "The Role of Machine Learning in Digital Marketing," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:10:y:2020:i:1:p:27-:d:335856. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.