Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals Lead in Usage of Online Social Networks (PDF; 53 KB)
Source: Harris Interactive/Witeck-Combs Communications

A recent national survey found that more online gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) individuals use social networks Friendster and MySpace per week compared to online heterosexuals. Other well-known websites such as YouTube, Craigslist and personal web logs also were found to be more popular among GLB individuals.

These are some of the highlights of a nationwide online survey of 2,541 U.S. adults (ages 18 and over) conducted between November 13 and 20, 2006, by Harris Interactive®, a global market research and consulting firm, in conjunction with Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., a strategic public relations and marketing communications firm with special expertise in the GLBT market. The results reported in this release refer to U.S. adults who are online.

27 percent of GLB individuals reported they visit the popular free video sharing website, youtube.com, at least one hour or less per week, compared with 22 percent of all heterosexuals. GLB individuals were also slightly more likely to visit Craigslist.com (20%), a centralized network of online urban communities, featuring free classified advertisements and forums, one hour or less per week (while 13% of heterosexuals say they visit Craigslist).

Even more significant is that gays and lesbians are online much more than their heterosexual counterparts. Excluding email, nearly twice as many gays and lesbians (32%) say they are online for between 24 and 168 hours per week, compared to 18 percent of heterosexuals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Internet, Social and cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.