The Rise of Social Networking Among Adults

Over the past four years, the Internet has grown up – literally!

It used to be that we would get online to shop and check out email. Well, statistics show that is no longer the case.

There is a major trend / shift in demographics that show adults have increased their use of social networking on the web.

From PewInternet.org:

79% of American adults used the internet in 2009, up from 67% in Feb. 2005
46% of online American adults 18 and older use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 8% in February 2005.
65% of teens 12-17 use online social networks as of Feb 2008, up from 58% in 2007 and 55% in 2006.
As of August 2009, Facebook was the most popular online social network for American adults 18 and older.

Just in the past 3 years alone, Facebook has grown from nothing to over 300 million users world-wide!

And it’s speculated that within the next couple of years, Facebook could actually grow to be a larger web property than Google.