8 Percent of American Internet Users Go to Twitter, Report Says

A new study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center found that 8 percent of Americans who are active on the Internet are enthusiastic users of the social networking service Twitter.

The study is part of a Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that explores the changes taking place surrounding the spread of technology in the United States over a 10-year period. This portion of the survey, which was conducted in November of this year, is a subset of a question posed to Americans asking if they “used Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?”

The results of the study found that the 8 percent of Americans who regularly use Twitter are primarily  “young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities.” The Pew researchers noted that people who live in urban settings are twice as likely to use the service as are those who live in more rural areas.

The researchers also found that African-Americans and Latinos are twice as likely to use the service than whites.

The researchers did not have an explanation for either of these findings.

In addition to the 8 percent of Internet users who said they used Twitter fairly regularly, 2 percent said they were extremely actively on Twitter and used the service on a daily basis.

The researchers found that a quarter of the active Twitter users checked the service several times a day, mostly looking for new content posted by others. Twelve percent said they checked once a day for content.

The Pew researchers noted in the report that they focused on Twitter because the service “is one of the most popular online activities among tech enthusiasts and has become a widely used tool among analysts to study the conversations and interests of users, buzz about news, products or services.” The findings also showed that 74 percent of American adults now actively use the Internet.

Twitter has become a focal point for researchers over the past several years due to the exorbitant amount of free-flowing information available to sift through and monitor.