As purveyors of social casino products such as Pokerist, Man Utd social casino and Roulettist; we here at KamaGames have a good insight into the popularity of social networks. But with social media evolving on an on-going basis it is interesting to see how different networks are thriving among different age groups. Perhaps our understanding of what is a popular social network among adults should differ from what research has shown is popular among different groups.

There were two recently released reports that highlighted that suggested that although Facebook is still king of social networks, over 1.49 billion users at last count, it's popularity among age groups does differ. For instance in the USA, Facebook is still the most popular social media site among adults with over a certain age. A figure of about 65% of all adults in the USA have reported that they use social media at different times during a month with nearly 90% of those aged 18 to 29 most likely to use social media at any time. This figure is highly impressive when you consider how much this particular age group are driving, and will continue to, drive the most conversations for all industries on social media for years to come. 

But is Facebook still the most popular social network of choice for all demographics? Perhaps not as much as it’s high market share suggests. Although it is top there are other platforms slowly moving around the recognised top 10 list. QZone whose social network Tencent QQ has overtaken Facebook in China are the closet rivals, at present, to Facebook on a global scale are an example of another network gaining users exponentially. While recently www.statisticbrain.com reported that Instagram had overtaken Twitter in terms of user numbers with a reported 302 million accounts activated since its inception. Although there might be a slight variance between the age groups, Pew Research are reporting that there is actually minimum disparity between how females (68%) and males (62%) interact with their social networks of choice. 

But as MySpace and Bebo were joined in the social network sphere, and overtaken by, Facebook and Twitter what do we need to understand about the so-called newer and emerging social networks? Visual platforms are becoming key among younger age groups with Instagram (33%), Twitter (20%) and Snapchat (19%) (in that order) relegating Facebook (14%) to 4th place among young teens. This research by Piper Jaffray does seem to contradict Pew Research Internet Project from the spring of 2015 that suggested that Facebook reigned over this important age group but was loosing some ground to other alternative networks. A reason, suggested by the two reports, for the variance was that teenagers found the presence of adults to be off putting in their chosen social network. 

Preferences for which social media platform you favour can vary depending on your age and interests but it is clear that no matter what you are looking for there is a lot of choice out there for you to post, play, share and check in on.