According to a new study from Pew, women use social media a whole lot more than their male counterparts. Seventy-six percent of online U.S. adult females use Facebook, compared to 66% for online males. For Twitter we see fairly similar numbers with 18% for women and 17% for men then Instagram (20/17) and Pinterest (33/8). That’s right. One-third of women are now using Pinterest.
All of the social media platforms have seen an increase in users in the last year. Instagram made particularly strong gains in the last year with 18-to-29-year-olds (up nine percentage points to 37 percent.)
Even though women make up the majority of these users they seem to not be getting much love back, at least in the form of retweets. According to new data, when it comes to resharing information provided on Twitter, women come out last. According to Shea Bennett of MediaBistro, Twitter may have a bit of a gender bias problem.
Bennett says a new tool called Twee-Q (Twitter Equality Quotient) found that after over more than 11,000 tests, and almost half a million retweets, men have been retweeted almost twice as often as women, with close to 63 percent of all retweets those of male users. Twee-Q found that Justin Bieber and President Obama were some of the biggest offenders when it came to not retweeting women. But if you look up your own score here, you may discover you are also practicing a bit of a gender bias.
Perhaps make one of your 2014 goals to at least follow more women on Twitter. Huffington Post Women does a great and hilarious list of the funniest Tweets from women every week. Or check out HuffPo’s Women in Tech to follow on Twitter. These ladies are worth the retweet. And definitely follow the Skillcrush Twitter account @Skillcrush!!
This piece was authored by Meredith Lepore and is reprinted by permission.
Image credit: CC by shawncampbell
