Demographics Of Mobile Social Media App Users By Time Spent, March 2013 [CHART]

Female smart phone owners report spending a little more than 2 hours a week using downloaded social networking applications, compared to slightly more than 1-and-a-half hours for men, (124 minutes vs. 96 minutes) finds J.D. Power and Associates in its 2013 US Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study. Looking at age groups, 18-24-year-olds not surprisingly are the heaviest users of social networking apps (154 minutes per week), though 35-44-year-olds (138 minutes) exceed the 25-34 group (120.5 minutes) in weekly consumption.

There is then a dramatic drop among older age groups, down to 82 minutes for the 45-54 set, 84.5 minutes for the 55-64 group, and 49 minutes for the 65 and over group.

The figures are substantially lower than self-reported consumption of social networking by respondents to an Ipsos study released early this year. In that study, social networking users reported spending more than 3 hours per day on the sites. Of course, the J.D. Power & Associates report is limited to smart phone users of social media applications, but other studies have estimated that mobile accounts for 40-55% of social media time, which would translate to considerably higher consumption than seen in this latest study, if using the Ipsos results as a benchmark. (Another caveat: that 40% figure from Nielsen is based on mobile app and mobile web usage of social networking, but the J.D. Power figures seem low even when accounting for that.) Read the rest at MarketingCharts.