The social platform with the youngest global user base is Tumblr, followed by Instagram and Pinterest, according to a recent report by GlobalWebIndex.
The analysis was based on survey data from a panel of people with Web access living in four countries at different stages Internet development: India, South Africa, Spain, and the United States.
To determine the age profiles of top platforms, GlobalWebIndex asked respondents of various ages to list which social networks they had used in the past month.
Although the results varied based national demographics (e.g., India has the youngest Internet population and so a smaller percentage of older users), some trends can be seen across all four countries:
- Facebook has an older age profile than Twitter in all countries surveyed, though the gap is more marked in Spain and the US than in South Africa and India. In addition, the oldest Facebook user profile is in the United States, most likely because of the maturity of the market and the platform's ubiquity there.
- LinkedIn and Google+ are the most commonly used social networks by the oldest demographic surveyed (55-64).
About the research: The report was based on data from an online survey of global Internet users conducted in 3Q13.
