Social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men worldwide, and across leading social sites, such as Facebook, women are more engaged—consuming more pages and spending more time—according to a new study from comScore.

On average, women spend 30% more time on social networking sites than men; moreover, 75.8% of online women visited a social networking site in May 2010, compared with 69.7% of men.


Moreover, women are more engaged than men with social networking sites: Though women accounted for 47.9% of total unique visitors to the social networking category in May, they consumed 57.0% of pages and accounted for 56.6% of total minutes spent on such sites.

Below, other findings from the comScore report, How Women Are Shaping the Internet, which provides an in-depth analysis of the female Internet user by Web activity, world region, and digital channel.

Social Networking Reach by Region

Social networking's reach is highest among online women in North America: 90.3% of them visited a social networking site in April 2010, followed by online women in Latin America (83.6%) and Europe (83.4%).

By contrast, 87.7% of online males in North America visited a social networking site during the period, followed by those in Latin America (81.8%) and Europe (87.7%).

How Women Spend Time Online

Social networking sites now capture the greatest share of all women's total time and attention online (16.3%), followed by instant messaging (11.3%) and email (7.7%). By contrast, men spend 11.7% of their total online time using social networks, and slightly less time using instant messaging (10.4%) and email (6.8%).


The index value (above chart) indicates the relative degree by which women are more likely to spend time on a certain category compared with men. Indices over 100 signify categories in which women spend more than their "fair share" of time online, whereas indices below 100 signify categories in which women spend less than their "fair share" of time online.

Age Factor

The 45+ female segment is driving the greatest proportion of growth for the social networking category in both visits and time spent. For older women, social networking is a new frontier they are embracing, whereas men are doing so to a much lesser degree, comScore finds.

User activity on Facebook mirrors the social media category itself, with a comparable female skew in reach and use, including no significant drop-off among older groups:

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