Although their existence began just a decade ago, social media sites have now become entrenched in our culture, and an integral element in our day to day lives. As such, Chitika Insights thought it would be interesting to look at social media on a national perspective.
To quantify this concept, Insights analyzed hundreds of millions of impressions of North American traffic over the last two weeks. We broke down the percentage of traffic that came from the selected social networking sites, to determine which states are social media hotspots.
Our data set revealed that Washington DC is the capital of social media. People in our nation’s capital frequent numerous social media sites, as they lead all states in Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Twitter, and MySpace usage per capita. Someone in DC is five times more likely to use Google+, three times more likely to use Twitter, and almost twice as likely to use Facebook as people in any other state. Perhaps our government employees are spending a little too much time checking their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The northeast is quite fond of social media. New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island all rank in the top ten social media friendly states. The west coast is also represented here, with Washington and California also finding themselves on our list.
In comparison, the states in which social media is less prevalent, there is much less of a regional dynamic. New Mexico is the least “sociable” state, followed by Mississippi, and then Montana. This may be a testament that these states are less tech savvy, which correlates with less time spent online. Perhaps, people in these states are simply more interested in spending their time elsewhere.
As social media further integrates itself into our society’s core, Insights will keep updating this study. It would be interesting to see where the states rank in a year’s time. For the time being, however, DC is at the center of social media’s adoption.