People are loving social networking! After email and search engines, social networking is used more frequently than anything else on the web (Pew Research Center).

Social sites are most popular with women and young adults under 30. 18-29 women are the power users. Nine out of ten women! Seven out of ten use them every day. Older users are the fastest growing bunch. The younger were early adopters and are stable in their growth. 70% of 30-49 year olds use social networking sites. 51% of 50-64 year olds and 33% older than 65 use the sites. 30 to 64 year olds are picking it up fast and are the fastest growing segment.

Interestingly, Pew Research found that there are no significant differences in use of social networking sites based on race and ethnicity, household income, education level, or whether they live in an urban, suburban, or rural environment.

The top word graphic shows what single word people said about social networking in this study (largest words mean more people said it).