Social Media’s Battle of the Sexes

Since the dawn of time, men and women have been compared. Driving, cooking, fashion, maturity – the comparisons exist in every part of life. I guess it will come as no surprise then to see that male is once again being matched against female in social media. A study into how men and women use social media sites was always going to be forthcoming given that such sites dominate our everyday lives, and it has been provided in the form of an infographic by data marketing firm DigitalFlashNYC. While a study into our social media habits may not come as a shock, some of the findings will turn a few heads.

The gender breakdown

Now some social media sites such as Pinterest which promotes itself as a place to “organise and share all the beautiful things that you find on the web” are always going to be favoured by women over men. Most men are only ever good at organising nights out or sports events; they will have no interest in browsing websites for pictures of things to decorate the home and organising them on a website. Therefore, it is no surprise that 82% of Pinterest users are women and that Cooking Light (a website about cooking) received a 6000% increase in traffic in just six months.

Likewise, one would assume that Reddit, a social news site all about submitting content via links (from blog posts, press releases, news sites, etc.), is a social media environment more dominated by males, and so it proves with a massive 84% of male users.

Men also dominate the user bases of Google+ with 71% of the market and, somewhat surprisingly, professional networking site LinkedIn with a 63% male demographic. A figure you would probably expect to be closer to 50-50. In fact, the inforgraphic shows that there are more male users of LinkedIn (101,430,000), than there are female users of Reddit and Google+ combined (86,486,000).

Gaming

Now, when it comes to online gaming, surely the percentage of male gamers will crush that of the females, right? Wrong. Very wrong actually. Zynga, the most popular online social networking game developer, producing games such as Zynga Poker, City Ville and Farm Ville, has 60% female users compared to the 40% that are male. What is most surprising though is that women over the age of 55 spend more time playing games online that men aged 15-24 and 25-34 combined! This means that your mum plays more games than you do!

The big two

Okay, talking about Pinterest, Reddit and Zynga is all well and good but we all know the figures that really matter. Who rules the roost when it comes to the big two – Facebook and Twitter? Well, it really isn’t a contest – women dominate!

64% of Twitter and 58% of Facebook users are female and 18% of females update their Facebook status daily compared to 11% of men. Women are also more likely to comment on posts and photos than men.

Overall

If you have come here to read this article as a man looking to get one over on female, then sorry guys it just isn’t our day. Women rack up 99 million more visits per month to social networking sites than men.

Now, as a man, I guess I better be off to Reddit!