1 in 2 Koreans use social media: survey

By Kim Rahn

About half of all Koreans use social media, a report showed, Sunday.

The report, conducted by the Korea Information Society Development Institute surveying 9,426 people last year, said 48.2 percent were using at least one social networking service, up 2.4 percentage points from a year before.

Younger people were more active in using social media ― 82.3 percent of people in their 20s were using it, while the ratio went down to 73.3 percent among those in their 30s, 55.9 percent in their 40s and 53.8 percent in their teens.

The time spent using social media per day was 56.4 minutes on average, a decrease from 2017's 70.2 minutes. People in their 20s spent the largest time on social media, one hour and seven minutes daily on average.

When asked which media they use the most, 34 percent of the respondents picked Facebook; 27 percent, Kakao Story; 14 percent, Twitter; 11.3 percent, Naver Band; and 10.8 percent, Instagram. The ranking was the same as last year, but the use of Instagram hiked from 6.4 percent in 2017 to 10.8 percent last year.

The surveyed people used social media mostly via smartphones: they spent 52 minutes using social media on smartphones, 2.7 minutes with desktops and 1.2 minutes on laptops.