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Social Media: Similar behaviours, different reasons
Recent research made a strong case for internet behaviour being lifestage driven. A pivotal age associated with lifestage breaks (typically the appearance of children!) is 30. 30 is also a pivotal age lens (+ or -) through which our industry often considers social networking sites. Much of the focus of this analysis is the under 30’s, but how are the over 30’s engaging with social networking sites and is 30 really a pivitol discriminator of behaviour in social networking?
Across the social networking sector as a whole, 30+ are less likely to be using them whereas the under 30’s over index - no major surprise. Under 30’s also consume more social media pages per person than the 30+’s.
However, over thirties engage in more sessions per person than the under thirties and also spend more time per person per month than the under thirties.
What’s driving this difference? Women over 30. They are spending two and a half hours per month on social networking than their 30+ male counterparts and over an hour more than women under thirty. And their pages per person is also higher than all of the other groups.
Where is all of this activity taking place? Like their male counterparts, they are much more likely to visit LinkedIn than the under 30’s. This makes sense. We know from other research from the UKOM/Nielsen APS system that older groups tend to be more functional in their online usage and LinkedIn has a strong functional, task orientated dimension to its offering.
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Composition Index (%)
| Average Time Per Person(hh:ss:mm) |
| | Facebook | LinkedIn | Facebook | LinkedIn |
|
Male
|
95
|
115
|
05:39:10
|
00:19:32
|
|
Female
|
105
|
85
|
07:20:54
|
00:22:13
|
|
Under 30
|
108
|
48
|
06:19:35
|
00:32:52
|
|
30+
|
96
|
125
|
06:38:18
|
00:18:26
|
|
Male - Under 30
|
103
|
44
|
06:05:21
|
00:15:04
|
|
Male - 30+
|
92
|
145
|
05:26:37
|
00:20:07
|
|
Female - Under 30
|
112
|
52
|
06:31:17
|
00:46:17
|
|
Female - 30+
|
101
|
102
|
07:49:50
|
00:15:49
|
| Source: UKOM APS, May 2010 |
This is borne out by usage statistics such as time per person which is only one third that of the under 30s for LinkedIn, indicating that the over thirties are entering, checking and leaving and that, by comparison, the under thirties are engaging with additional features…perhaps being group who are in the process of building their networks. It's likely the over thirties, as a group, have more of an established network (possibly offline as well) and for them LinkedIn is more about maintenance than building.
Away from managing professional relationships, how do the over thirties engage in truly social networking? Well, once again, they’re spending more time per person than their under 30 counterparts and are engaging in more sessions per person. Unlike LinkedIn, over 30 women are driving usage, accounting for more time than any other group under analysis. 30+ men are less likely to visit Facebook (composition index: 92) and spending only 5 hours per person per month.
Why do we see these differences? Well, I suspect this is rooted in the role that Facebook manifests for groups. Previous research suggests that for the under 30’s, the Internet is about the projection of identity – Facebook facilitates this identity projection and therefore is a cornerstone of under 30’s activity online. For the slightly more task-orientated over thirties, Facebook is still critically important but is perhaps less about identity projection and more motivated by relationship management – particularly with increasingly geographically separated family groupings.
So it is clear that 30 is indeed a pivotal ‘lens’ through which to view social networking activity. It does appear that different motivations are driving seemingly similar behaviour and that the over 30’s are more engaged than we might imagine but probably through subtly different motivations than we might assume. It raises interesting questions for media placement behaviourally – will the same creative, targeted at a behaviourally homogenous group, be received in different ways?
Andrew Bradford
Vice President, Client Consulting, Media
The Nielsen Company
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