As expected, young people show the highest level of social media involvement. At the same time, social network preferences are shaped by age differences.

MOSCOW, February 12, 2018. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) presents the results of a study devoted to social media and messengers that Russians use.

As expected, youth show the highest level of social media involvement; 91% of the 18-24-year-olds and 69% of the 25-34-year-olds vs. only 15% of those aged 60 and over use social networking sites almost every day.

According to the survey data, VKontakte networking site is the most popular in Russia; 28% of respondents report to use it on a daily basis. The second largest networking platform is Odnoklassniki (19%) followed by Instagram (14%) on the third place. The  Google+ daily audience is 7%; Facebook, Moi Mir gained 4% (each); Twitter and LiveJournal got 1% (each).

Social media choices are influenced by age differences. Youth tend to opt for VKontakte and Instagram. Most of those who use VKontakte website are young Russians aged 25–34 (40%). As to Instagram, the share of the 18-24-year-olds who use this website is 38%, and the share of the 25-34-year-olds is 37%. Odnoklassniki is mainly popular among those aged 25-34 (28%). At the same time, the distribution of the Odnoklassniki audience by age is the closest to the general distribution of the Russian Internet audience for all social media platforms. The Facebook and Moi Mir audiences are basically adults. Facebook is largely popular among those aged 35-44 (28%) and 45-59 (26%); the Moi Mir core audience are respondents aged 45-59 (39%).

Fifty-two percent of Internet users use mobile phones/smartphones to access the Internet. Instagram and VKontakte users overwhelmingly use their mobile phones to get access to the Internet (92% and 84%); about 70% use this device to communicate through other networking sites.

As to IM clients and software, almost three-quarters of respondents said that they used IM clients: 62% had sent at least one message in 24 hours leading up to the survey (90% among those younger than 25 y.o.; 57% among the 45-59-year-olds; 32% among those aged 60 and over).  

WhatsApp is the primary messenger for 44% of Russians; this is followed by VKontakte (32%), SMS (32%) and Viber (30%). Respondents’ age is also important when choosing an IM client: persons aged 60 and over most frequently use SMS (43%) while those aged 18-24 prefer VKontakte (69%).

High degree of commitment to a particular instant messenger is typical of VKontakte (67% use VKontakte messenger as their primary) and Odnoklassniki (62%) users.

The Medialogia Company conducted an analysis of social media and IM mentions in the Russian media in January. Telegram is at the top of the rating with 145,300 mentions. Top five most popular services involve Facebook (132,600), Instagram (120,400), VKontakte (111,900) and Twitter (106,700).

The VCIOM-Sputnik survey was conducted on December 2-3, 2017. The survey involved 2,400 Russians aged 18 and over, and was carried out using stratified dual-frame random sample based on a complete list of landline and mobile phone numbers operating in Russia. The data were weighted according to selection probability and social and demographic characteristics. The margin of error at a 95% confidence level does not exceed 2%. In addition to sampling error, minor changes in question wording and different circumstances arising during the fieldwork can introduce bias into the survey.

The Russian media monitoring and analysis is carried out by the Medialogia Company using the Medialogia database of 43,400 sources such as television, radio, newspaper, magazines information agencies and online media. The period of study was January 2018.

Note: Using materials from the site www.wciom.ru or wciom.com, as well as distributed by VCIOM, the reference to the source (or hyperlink for the electronic media) is obligatory!