Social Media & Interconnectivity

The origin of social media in the twenty-first century has followed the pattern of electronic media in the late twentieth century. People based in the United States dominated the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter during the early years.

Social media originating in the United States will undoubtedly continue to diffuse to the rest of the world, although the rate and extent of future diffusion remains unknown. Will U.S. dominance reduce rapidly, or will people elsewhere in the world embrace other forms of social media instead? Evidence is mixed.

Diffusion of Facebook

Facebook, founded in 2004 by Harvard University students, has diffused rapidly to become by far the world’s most popular social media platform. The United States started out with far more Facebook users than any other country. In 2009, five years after Facebook’s founding, 34 percent of all users worldwide were clustered in the United States, which had 55 million users, well ahead of second place United Kingdom with 18 million

Diffusion of Facebook

Users in millions (a) in 2008, (b) in 2018.

The number of Facebook users continued to increase in the United States, to 185 million in 2017. But as Facebook has diffused to other countries, the share of users in the United States has declined, to 20 percent of the worldwide total in 2011 and 11 percent in 2017. In 2014, India became the second country to have more than 100 million Facebook users. Behind India were other developing countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico. Between 2009 and 2017, the United Kingdom fell from second to eighth in number of users, and Canada fell from third to sixteenth.

Diffusion of Instagram

Instagram is following a similar pattern to other social media (Table 4-3). In 2017, 17 percent of Instagram users were in the United States. However, the United States was only the third most frequently photographed country on Instagram. Italy was first and Japan second.

Changing Distribution and Diffusion of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Americans dominate the most popular Instagram accounts by followers. Seven of the ten Instagram users with the largest number of followers in 2018 were American entertainers (Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Dwayne Johnson). The three non-Americans were Canadian singer Justin Bieber, Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, and Brazilian soccer player Neymar

Pause & Reflect 4.3.2

A recent study of University of Maryland students found that not using any electronics for 24 hours produced anxiety, craving, and other symptoms. How do you think you would react to a 24-hour ban on all electronics?

Diffusion of Twitter

The United States was the leading source of Twitter and Instagram messages in 2017. In the case of Twitter, the second leading Twitter country is one of the world’s poorest, India. This may be a preview of future trends, in which electronic communications advances diffuse rapidly to developing countries, not just to other developed countries.

Distribution of Twitter users, 2017 Distribution of Instagram Users, 2017

Americans dominate the list of the most popular Twitter postings. Seven of the ten Twitter posters with the largest numbers of followers in 2018 were Americans, including Former President Obama, five entertainers (Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Ellen DeGeneres, and Justin Timberlake), and YouTube. The three non-Americans were the entertainers Rihanna (from Barbados), Justin Bieber (from Canada), and the football (soccer) player Cristiano Ronaldo (from Portugal).

Though the most widely followed social media content is popular entertainment with wide appeal, individuals may make distinctive choices in social media that they may wish to keep private