Teenage users are easing off Facebook during the summer period, while their parents are flocking to the service.
Studying US audience statistics, it’s clear that there’s been a slight shift over the last month in Facebook’s demographic. Facebook’s usage between 18-25 year olds reduced by 3% last month, whereas users between the age of 35-65 have skyrocketed.
The amount of users over the age of 55 has grown by 513.7%! This takes Facebook’s grey-haired, buspass wielding count up to nearly 6 million ‘active’ monthly users (although, unsurprisingly, not all of them are particularly active, enjoying plentiful naps, watching a lot of daytime television and staring out of the same window for hours).
Over here in the UK the trend is similar, with a big leap towards older internet users logging on. 45-54 year old brits have increased from (approximately) 1,180,000 up to 1,430,000. The golden oldies, 55-64 year olds have increased their numbers from 416,000 up to 605,000
This is an impressive oldie presence for the web, and brings our elders into genuine marketable consideration. It’s the biggest continuing shift in Facebook’s demographic at the moment, and while it’s surely partly down to teenage kids working and socialising in the brief sunshine, it’s also no doubt the start of a shift in the age of the site’s user base.
There’s another interesting shift going on, as the popular platform picks up more pace in countries that have otherwise been dominated by other social networking platforms. There’s been a big rise in India and Brazil, both previously ruled by Google’s Orkut.
India jumped from 1.6 million active users per month to 3.2 in May and June. Brazil’s just broken the 1 million mark. While Orkut is still some way ahead (totaling over 30 million users between the two territories), Facebook is slowly catching.
It’s increasing in other places, too. In the month of June alone, Facebook managed to increase its presence in the Philippines by 50%, 42% in Indonesia and 25% in Mexico.
Within Europe there’ve been big increases as well. 76% increases in the Netherlands, 144% in the Czech Republic and 22% in Italy. These are big jumps in South America, Asia and Europe.
This is down to a few different factors. Firstly, there’s Facebook’s nifty ‘crowd sourced’ translations making the platform more and more user friendly for non-English speakers. Secondly, Facebook’s intelligent mobile distribution makes it a popular option for those who spend their social time browsing on their phone. Thirdly, Facebook is becoming the hot option as a ‘second social site’, grabbing users who want a more international offering to accompany the time they spend on their local versions of the model.
