Australians the most active social media users?

A Neilsen study conducted in December has returned some very interesting statistics on the world’s social media usage. Apparently, it is not the Americans or the British spending the most time on sites like Facebook and Twitter, believe it or not, that title belongs to the Australians.

The global comparison study revealed that despite all the sunny weather and beautiful beaches, Australians on average spend 6 hours and 52 minutes each month on social media websites—some distance in front of the United States and the United Kingdom who spend 6 hours and 9 minutes and 6 hours and 7 minutes respectively on these sites.

Here’s the full list (h:m:s):

1. Australia – 6:52:28
2. United States -6:09:13
3. United Kingdom – 6:07:54
4. Italy – 6:00:07
5. Spain – 5:30:55
6. Brazil – 4:33:10
7. Germany – 4:11:45
8. France – 4:04:39
9. Switzerland – 3:54:34
10. Japan – 2:50:21

Doesn’t make sense, right? How can Australian’s who have such a major outdoor culture be ahead of these other countries? Well, being Australian and a social media frequenter myself, I think I can come up with a few reasons why.

Firstly, I think the biggest reason for their heavy usage is due to the fact that Australians love to travel. It’s pretty much tradition to fly off somewhere as soon as you finish your education. Actually, Australians will take advantage of any chance to jump on a plane and an interesting little statistic is that around 5% of the Australian population is abroad right now as we speak. Anyway, in the words of Andrew Weiner, “social media is to world travelling as steamed lobster is to hot drawn butter”. It simply is the best way to stay connected and share photos while you are overseas and Australians are making the most of it.

Some other reasons are Australia’s geographical isolation, its mateship culture and, I hate to say it, its laziness. Some people have also mentioned that it’s too hot to go outside while others like andymurd believe Australia’s internet speed is to blame. He writes, “Maybe Australians spend so much time on social networking sites because our internet is so slow – we’re just waiting for the page to load”.

If you want some more reasons, Ross Dawson on his blog has come up with a rather comprehensive discussion on the subject and it is definitely worth a read.

Another equally compelling statistic that came out of the Neilsen study was that social media traffic worldwide had surged 82% over the past two years. The global average of time logged onto social media has jumped to 5 and a half hours—that’s two and a half hours longer compared to the same statistic two years ago. Nielsen also reported that there are now 300 million social media users worldwide and Twitter was the fastest growing social media network.

Very interesting indeed. No doubt these statistics will have digital marketers across the world drooling all over their keyboards.