US Twitter users are younger, richer, better educated — and talking to themselves

If you’ve ever felt like Twitter is just some strange echo chamber for journalists, activists and politicos to be tweeting in outrage at one thing or another, that’s probably because it kind of is, a new study indicates.

A Pew Research Center analysis found that US Twitter users are younger, richer, more educated and more left-leaning than the general population — and the most active among them, 65 percent of whom are women, happen to tweet a lot about politics.

The study also found that a stunning 90 percent of all Twitter users don’t tweet much at all — and 80 percent of the content on the micro-blogging platform is posted by the other 10 percent. So, a relatively tiny few really are doing all the tweeting.

Pew said that 22 percent of US adults use Twitter, much less than the nearly 70 percent who use Facebook. The median age of Twitter users is 40 — seven years younger than the population overall.

The analysis also has an answer for why you might seem to be regularly bumping into people who look suspiciously troll-like and have only a few followers. It’s because the median Twitter user posts only two tweets per month and has only 25 followers.

Some 42 percent of users have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 31 percent of the population overall — and 41 percent had household income over $75,000, compared with 32 percent for the general population.

Only 21 percent surveyed for the study said they identified with the Republican Party, with a smaller 14 percent saying their political views were “very conservative.” In contrast, 36 percent said they identified with the Democratic Party.

Twitter has faced backlash in recent months after conservatives accused the company of holding a liberal bias after some top Republicans and conservative commentators found themselves “shadowbanned” on the platform. Last year CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that the platform itself was “left-leaning” but insisted it operates without bias against conservative voices.

US President Donald Trump, a prolific tweeter himself, had a surprise closed-door meeting with Dorsey on Wednesday after he berated the platform for what he called “discriminatory” behavior toward conservatives.

Trump has almost two times fewer followers (59.9 million) than the three people with the biggest numbers – singer Katy Perry (107 million), former US president Barack Obama (106 million) and singer Justin Bieber (105 million).

Like this story? Share it with a friend!