This archive report was first published on 22 July 2019.
According to a report by the United States International University Africa (USIU-Africa) and the US Embassy, Nairobi residents earning between Sh30,000 and Sh49,000 a month spend the highest amount of time on social media.
Conducted between December 2018 and March 2019, the survey found that this demographic spends up to three hours on social media on a typical day, with YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp being their preferred platforms.
Those in this income bracket are followed by middle-class earners, who spend up to an hour daily on social media, with a preference for LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo, and Snapchat.
Interestingly, the survey revealed that men are more active on social media compared to women, with men leading in all social media platforms as active users.
As the survey noted, 'men highly use Yahoo and Twitter more as social media platforms … It is striking that while men use Twitter the most, women use it the least and the vice versa is true when it comes to the use of Snapchat.'
The survey, which sampled 3,269 respondents aged between 14 and 55 years, also found that most Kenyans are active online at night, with WhatsApp and Facebook being the most popular platforms followed by YouTube.
The sample was drawn from Kenya's former eight administrative provinces, including Nairobi, Coast, Central, Western, Nyanza, Eastern, Rift Valley, and North Eastern.
