Women spend longer on social sites

Women spend 30 per cent longer on social networking sites such as Facebook than men globally, new research from comScore has found.

Thursday, 29 July 2010

Females spend on average 5.5 hours a month on social networking sites compared to men who only use the site for four hours.

It was also found that 75.8 per cent of all women online visited a social networking site in May 2010 while only 69.7 per cent of men did.

Linda Boland Abraham, chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development at comScore, believes that understanding web use based on gender can help companies engage with both sexes online.

Social networking sites were found to be most popular in Latin America as they reached 94.1 per cent of women there, compared to 91 per cent in North America.

In Europe, 85.6 per cent of females spent time on a social networking site in May.

According to a study by the Brigham Young University in the US, it was found that having a good network of friends could improve people's health and social media sites could provide contacts.