Are men about to become the dominant gender on social?
In social media circles it’s well-known that women have historically been the most dominant users of social. In 2010, comScore released a global report on Internet use, revealing that 75.8% of all women with an online presence visited social networking sites versus only 69.7% of men.

However, over the last couple of years many articles have reported a significant increase in the amount of men using social media across the UK. Our publicly-available analysis on the demographic breakdown of social network users validates this. But while it is true that there is an almost indistinguishable difference in overall usage between genders, our survey found that women are still more likely to use social media on a daily basis (76%) in comparison to men (70%).

Generally, women are also the biggest users of the leading platforms that mainstream media tends to obsess about. Although Facebook is the most popular form of social networking for both genders, only 75% of men online use the site while the usage rate for women is somewhat higher at 82%. The same pattern can be seen in the use of: WhatsApp (52% versus 43%); Instagram (32% versus 27%); and Snapchat (23% women versus 18% men). Most notable however, is the gender divide in the use of Pinterest. While nearly four in ten (38%) women are users, only two in ten (20%) men use the social networking site.

Overall, the only platforms with a statistically significant difference in favour of men are: LinkedIn (33% versus 26%); Periscope (8% versus 4%); and Twitter (46% versus 43%). There is a marginal difference between men and women in terms of usage for YouTube and Google+, which both have a 1-point percentage difference.

Despite this, women clearly remain the largest demographic in social media use. However men are undeniably catching up in comparison to figures that date back to 2010, a trend that we expect to continue as social network usage continues to evolve.