Social Media use doubles in Rural India

Usage of social media in Rural India has grown by an impressive 100 percent during the year 2014-15. The number of people in Rural India using the internet to access Twitter and Facebook stood at 25 million, up from close to 12 million last year. On the other hand, Urban India registered a relatively lower growth of 35 percent with the total number of users at 118 million as on April 2015. According to the ‘Social Media in India 2014’ report, jointly released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, there are 143 million social media users in India as on April 2015. Over half the users are really active on social media sites. The report also finds that the top four Metros namely New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, continue to account for almost half of the social media users in Urban India.

According to the report, the largest segment accessing social media consists of the College Going Students (34%), followed by Young Men (27%). School going children constitute 12% of the social media users. College Going Students and Young Men collectively form the 60% of the social media users in Urban India. Facebook emerged the leading social media website with 96% of urban users accessing it, followed by Google Plus (61%), Twitter (43%) and LinkedIn (24%). According to the report, maintaining a profile on social networking sites is the top activity of users, followed by updating status.  Commenting on a blog site is the third most popular activity among users in social networking sites.

Accessing social media is one of the key reasons for people to access the Internet. In fact, for many people accessing the Internet for the first time, social media was the reason they embraced Internet. The report further finds that 61% of these users access social media on their mobile device. Given the mobile tele-density of India at 76.02% and with the expected increase in mobile traffic, the number of users accessing social media on mobile is only bound to increase.

(Source: IMAI-IMRB report New Delhi, June 17, 2015 and The Hindu article dated June 20, 2015)