Many studies have found an addictive quality to social media the cause teens to exhibit emotional withdrawal. As part of a well-publicized study, one teen who found himself separated from social media said that he “began to feel distress and despair.” Despair? Geez.

According to new information from the Pew Internet Project, young people are not the only ones who are finding the allure of social media too compelling to ignore.

Pew surveyed 2,277 adults over the course of one month and found that 65% of all adult internet users say they use a social networking site. Last year, that number was 61% in the same type of survey.

Social media usage among those aged 30 and younger didn’t really budge. One year ago, 60% said they are on a site like Facebook or Myspace. This year, 61% made the same claim. No, it wasn’t the young generation that made the move – it was the boomers.

Among users aged 50 to 64, social media use has grown from 20% to 32%. That’s a 60% increase over the last year. It looks like your father or your grandpa has found their way to The Twitter.

Although more of this older generation (I apologize for the title, they aren’t “old,” I guess) is logging on to social networking sites, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are checking them everyday like the younger generation does.

“The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,” said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”

Another interesting finding from the survey: Young women are truly the queens of social media. 89% of females aged 18 to 29 report that they use social media sites. 69% say they check them every day.

As part of the survey, Pew also asked respondents to say what they thought about social media. And as a result, this word cloud was born:

Interesting to see the prominence of the words “good” “fun” and “convenient” and the relative irrelevance of the sentiments “annoying,” “intrusive” and “confusing.”

That analysis was based on a little over 4.4 million Google+ users, a little under a fifth of the reported total users at the time. What it found was that the landscape was dominated by men, by a huge margin of 71.2% to 27.8%. Other interesting stats included to overwhelming population of engineers and Google employees using the social network

Bime has updated their dashboard, this time including a voluntary sample of over 10 million Google+users. Even with Google opening up the registration to allow many more users, the male/female ratio remains basically unchanged. The girls have yet to flock to Google+.

Okay, the dynamic has shifted a little bit. Instead of 72-28 in favor of the guys, the figure is now 70-30. Come on, gals, it’s looking like an awkward middle school party in here.

Here’s what has changed in the last few weeks:

First, the occupation landscape has shifted. Back in July, users overwhelmingly identified themselves as engineers, developers, and designers. In August, the largest occupation has shifted to student.

In July, the company with the largest percentage of Google+ users was, unsurprisingly, Google. Now, the largest employment group identified by users is “self-employed.” New entrants into the top companies list include Sony, HP, and strangely enough, Subway.

One interesting stat to emerge is the number of inactive users on Google+. Apparently, 83% of users are classified as inactive. To be fair, reports have stated that a high percentage of Twitter users are classified “inactive” as well. No extra details about what constitutes “inactive” are given.

The prevalent stat, however, continues to be the male dominance of the social network in its early stages. That gender distribution has to level out, right?

Check out the visualization below -

In fact, the shocking percentage reported then was 88% male. Some other reports a few weeks later reported the statistic to be a little more balanced – more like 66.4% to 33.6%.

Although the percentages have tilted a little toward the ladies, Google+ is still a male-dominated landscape. Today, we have some more statistics about the early adopters of Google’s social network.

Using figures from both findpeopleonplus.com and comScore, data analysis company Bime has released a fun visualization on their blog concerning Google+ demographics.

The stats comes from a sampling of over 4.4 million Google+ users, most like around a fifth of total users on the network. The data is a little old, so it may not be a perfect representation of who’s on Google+, but it should be a pretty accurate portrait.

The gender distribution turns out to favor males, only not as much as previous reports. Bime’s visualization has the split at 71.2% to 27.8%. As far as age distribution (the comScore stats), 25-34 year olds make up the largest chuck of the user base.

The top three occupations for the early users are Engineer, Developer and Designer, receptively. Following those three are Software Engineers and Web Developers.

Users are overwhelmingly American, with the next closest country being India with about a third of the American total. Within the U.S., most users live in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio, respectively.

Check out the full visualization below -

LikeAudience is being developed by David Stillwell of Nottingham University and Michal Kosinski of Cambridge University, with the support of the Cambridge University Psychometrics Center. The data is pulled together through the Facebook applications myPersonality and myIQ. Apparently, thousands of people use these applications daily, and their data and likes are collected (with consent, mind you) to be used in LikeAudience.

On the website, they stress privacy, saying all info looks as such when they get their hands on it:

female; 34 years old; Extraversion score: 4.5; Openness score 3.5; (); likes Lady GaGa
male; 22 years old; Extraversion score: 2.5; Openness score 1.5; likes Marilyn Manson

One problem if you are trying to use the tool right now is the small sample size. As of today, it only includes about 50,000 people and 6 million individual likes. Good news however, they will be adding 50,000 people in the sample database monthly.

Here is how you can use LikeAudience:

You can search for any subject, and if it has a Facebook page it will probably show up. I searched for “Radiohead.” I am then given a chart of certain attributes, seen below. To nobody’s surprise, Radiohead fans are predominately male introverts between the ages of 23-29. They also have fewer Facebook friends than average and are mostly single.

As you can see above, one problem with the current small sample size means that not enough data exists to calculate intelligence and life satisfaction.

You can also work LikeAudience in reverse, selecting varying levels of certain traits and finding out which pages that type of person likes. My search for less intelligent, outgoing females told me they like Khloe Kardashian, The Hills and Willow Smith.

This is all good fun, as it’s great to see the demographics of people who like the things you like. But as this tool expands to include more and more data, it could become very useful to marketers who are trying to get to know their target audience. For instance, Wendy’s could look and see that their average customer is an outgoing single male, about 23 years old. On the other hand, Taco Bell’s average fan is only 21 years old and is less predominately male than Wendy’s. So, while interesting on its own, this could become a great tool for targeted advertising.

Thanks to Josh Constine at Inside Facebook.

"The increasing availability of electronic communication data, such as that arising from email exchange, presents social and information scientists with new possibilities for characterizing individual behavior and, by extension, identifying latent structure in human populations," says the abstract for the report.

Technology Review simplifies what is found in the rather complex report:

Small worlds expert Duncan Watts at Yahoo Research in New York City and a few pals studied the time of day at which around 3000 individuals at a European university sent emails over an 83-day period as well as the email habits of over 122,000 e-mailers at a US university over a 2-year period.

They found two distinct types of emailer. They termed the first "day labourers" because they tended to send emails throughout the normal working day between 0900 and 1800 but not at other times. The second group they called "emailaholics" because these people sent emails throughout the waking hours from 0900 to 0100.

It will be interesting to see if Yahoo incorporates such demographics into the targeting of their own marketing offerings. Marketers will always be salivating over new ways to break down potential audiences for more relevant targeting.

The only way to open new opportunities in this regard is through extensive research, and it looks like that is what Yahoo is doing. You can take a look at the full report here (pdf).

Twitter has grown in legend and lore as of late. It is being used by Shaquille O’Neal, Ashton and Mrs. Kutcher, big business like Dell and Southwest Airlines and President Obama. You can’t seem to turn around without bumping into someone either blubbering over the importance of Twitter or another person bemoaning the decline and fall of Western civilization as a result of it. One thing is for sure, people read, write and talk about it a lot and as the talk grows so does the usage.

A look at the age demographics of Twitter users may be a surprise to some.

A Reuters blog post takes a look at this pattern and discusses the move toward older demographics using social media in general more.

Why this is a surprise to many is a surprise to me. Most users of social media are being attracted by the business applications of social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. Many of the youngest people who have grown up squarely in the Internet Age are probably not that excited about these things anymore simply because their parents are now involved! I know that when I talk to my kids about something that they think is cool it immediately takes a lot of the cool out of it for them. Their logic is that it can’t be that cool if Dad is into it (welcome to my life).

Another driver for this business application by an older demographic is the economy. Twitter probably benefits greatly from the fact that everyone is scrambling to survive in this economic mess. As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Since it doesn’t cost anything other than time to be on these social media outlets and people don’t need to leave their house or office to do it the option becomes more attractive particularly to those who have to pay the bills.

Now, did the people at Twitter predict this type of usage pattern from the start? They will say yes I suppose but who knows. The reality of social media though is that no one can truly predict how any one avenue will be adopted by any particular group. It’s the newness and the Wild West aspect of all of this that keeps it interesting.

As things are shaping up though it appears that the money for social media will ultimately be from those who want to apply it for commercial use and not for those who want to simply share the incredibly ridiculous and inane details of their otherwise empty lives. Was that too harsh?

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Among the interesting things is how much Generation X and Generation Y use the Internet, likely because both generations grew up with it. The data holds on fairly well until you hit age 71, when Internet usage drops significantly.

Internet usage by age is clear. But Internet usage by gender is a little less clear, with men (78%) slightly outpacing women (75%). Internet usage by ethnicity shows that whites (78%) are pretty similar to Latinos (75%), with both exceeding usage among African-Americans (68%). Not surprisingly, Internet usage increases with education and income.

All the other data I’ve seen shows that numbers across the board continue to climb, and even if you’re targeting older Americans, there are sites such as Eons and Third Age that do a great job targeting older people for social media marketing.

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A Nielsen//NetRatings report shows that kids (ages 2-11) and teens (12-17) consumed more online videos than those over 18. While adults logged in 99 minutes (44 (streams) in April from home, kids racked up 118 minutes (51 streams), and teens took in 132 minutes (74 streams)*.

“Today’s youth don’t know – or don’t remember – a time when they weren’t going online, so their adoption of online video has been seamless,” said Michael Pond, senior media analyst, Nielsen Online. “And while video consumption in the workplace increases usage metrics among adults, the ‘at home’ data show how kids and teens are driving usage and claiming their territory.

"The Web provides another platform for their interest in TV shows, toys, movies and music, and offers an interactive element that children especially enjoy. Among the top sites for the younger demographic we see publishers that are integrating video into games, music and other content to drive engagement with this multi-media generation.”

What interests the age groups is, unsurprisingly, different. Younger kids check out toy-related and TV-related content most often, while teens focus more on music videos and movie trailers.

The top-drawing sites among kids and teens are no doubt sites you’ve heard of, and in some cases stretch across age barriers. YouTube, Disney, and MySpace, for example, are favorites among both age groups, bringing large numbers of both. The sites with the largest kid audiences are as follows:

1. YouTube
2. DisneyChannel.com
3. Nick
4. Disney.com
5. MySpace
6. NickJr
7. Buena Vista Online Entertainment
8. Cartoon Network
9. Playhouse Disney
10. Google Video

Among teens, the largest audiences belong to:

1. YouTube
2. MySpace.com
3. NABBR
4. Google Video
5. Photobucket
6. Apple
7. DisneyChannel.com
8. Veoh
9. Metacafe
10. Facebook

Some video sites, while not claiming necessarily the largest audience, boast high concentrations of the particular demographics. For kids aged 2-11, you’re likely to find many of them hanging out at:

1. DisneyRecords
2. EverythingGirl.com
3. MyePets
4. JETIX
5. Playhouse Disney
6. PBS Kids
7. LEGO
8. NickJr
9. Barbie
10. Nick

For the 12-17 age group, they’re likely haunting:

1. Stickam
2. Buzznet.com
3. Atlantic Records
4. Epic Records
5. Bebo
6. Funnyjunk.com
7. NABBR
8. GamesRadar
9. Paramount Films
10. Photobucket

_{Still, this is only a couple hours – the length of a movie or a Family Guy marathon – per month. When I was ten years old, I could tell you what was on at least eight channels between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. I was a walking TV Guide, an idiot savant without the savant part.} 

YouTube’s analytics program, Insight, originally featured information on:

• how many people have viewed your video
• what day of the week you get the most views
• where people live who are watching your video
• insight into popularity of your video

Now they’ve added

a new demographics tab that displays view count information broken down by age group (such as ages 18-24), gender, or a combination of the two, to help you get a better understanding of the makeup of your YouTube audience.

Now before privacy advocates get all het up, the information is given to video owners “in anonymous and aggregate form, based on the birth date and gender information that users share with us when they create YouTube accounts.” (Okay, privacy advocates, go ahead and get het up now. We know you’re going to anyway.)

Another new feature will show the total number of views on all your videos, as well as “your relative popularity on YouTube compared to other users, based on geographic location.”

Insight information is still located under Account > My Videos > Insight. Google says that video owners have already begun modifying their uploading habits (and I’m sure the content they’ve produced) based upon Insight’s popularity information. I’m sure that this will only continue that trend. And you know how I feel about data .

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About 50 percent of all display ad clicks come from 6 percent of the online population, according to a new study from Starcom USA, Tacoda, and comScore.  Heavy clickers tend to be between the ages of 25 and 44, and have incomes of less than $40,000 per year.

To be clear, there’s nothing "wrong" with these people; a handful of pot-kettle arguments would come up pretty quickly if your humble author tried to suggest that.  There’s only something sort of misguided about the campaigns that attract them.

An official release states, "Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.  The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance."

That’s bound to be disappointing to some of you, but for others, there’s an upside; as Michael Learmonth points out, "Heavy clickers are most likely to end up on gambling, career and auction sites."