2015 Facebook insights: what do users do in summertime?

The summer weather is looking rather nice! People everywhere are temporarily abandoning the doldrums of daily life and are dedicating more of their time to other activities, especially if they involve the great outdoors. But, every year, at the beginning of summer, some users go off the radar from their social media circles for an indefinite amount of time. However, what are they really up to? 

According to Facebook IQ, a company dedicated to analysing the world's favourite social media network, not all is how it appears to be. Their guess was evidenced by one of their studies conducted in May 2015, which demonstrated the exact opposite of what most would assume. The research took place over a period of four months(late May - early September, 2014), based on the actions of people 18 and over from 21 different Countriesincluding Italy, Norway, Japan, and even the United States.

During the summer, the cellphone became the de facto object to use in order to stay connected to the outside world. The study revealed that, during the period,70% of those surveyedconneced to Facebook via mobile devices. 75%of these interactions, including content sharing, was done through smartphones. The possibility to stay constantly connected to their circle of friends while engaging in their own personal activities was motivation enough, which was demonstrated by the fact that people from each Country shared800 million contents daily. 

Summer, for many people, is synonymous with relaxation. During the hottest months, people are more friendly and outgoing, and by observing infographics from the study, it's clear that participantsaccepted more friends during this period. Indeed, an increase in friendships of 20%, 14%, and 6% was noted compared to spring, winter, and autumn periods respectively. 

The summertime was the peak period to reconnect to the great outdoors. Proportionally, the number of pictures uploaded to social media channels had also increased. The analyses published by Facebook IQ showed agrowth in shares of 22% compared to the winter seasonand 7%compared to the autumn. Larger was the desire to share with friends personal status updates for numerous reasons: to gain bragging rights on your activities or to challenge your contacts to do the same. The smarphone became the ideal tool to immediately share information without the assistance of other devices. To confirm this, the information disclosed by researchers found that during the period, 76%of all pictures on Facebook were uploaded by a mobile device. 

In the summer months, topics of discussion tend to change to more lighthearted subjects compared to other periods of the year. Specifically, people focused on goals they want to achieve. In 2014, for Facebook users from 12 out of 21 countries, most people se their sights on personal fitness. From the study, an emerging trend was that opinions were extremely important, and across all social media platforms, all of the subjects were the same: on Instagram, some of the most widely used hashtags were #fitness, #exercise, and #eatclean. Among the goals people discussed, people wanted to spend more time outdoors (43%), try a new experience (32%), and to work on their home (21%). It's apparent that people love to keep their schedules full of exciting activities during the summer, which is why users cover such wide array of topics: in the survey, people talked about earning degrees and other family events, in addition to pool parties, friends, and large journeys. In conclusion, several forward-thinking planners, even in the hottest months of the year, shared ideas about returning back to their jobs, families, and schools.

In the next post, we will offer more insights on trends related to social media. Stay tuned!