Protestants in Kenya are the heaviest consumers of social media followed by the Roman Catholics faith and the muslims, a new study has revealed.
The new research dubbed: “Social Media Consumption in Kenya: Trends and Practices” showed that Hindus rarely used social media platforms.
The study conducted by the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa) SIMElab, was drawn from a nationwide survey of social media consumption patterns among different demographic segments between December 2018 and March 2019.
More than 3,000 participants aged between 14 and 55 years from eight counties drawn from Kenya’s former administrative provinces — Nairobi, Coast, Central, Western, Nyanza, Eastern, Rift Valley and North Eastern were involved in the study.
The report, which was funded by the USIU-Africa and the United States Embassy, was carried out by the USIU SIMElab to map out the social media consumption in the country.
The report, which was funded by the USIU-Africa and the United States Embassy, was carried out by the USIU SIMElab to map out the social media consumption in the country.
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The research further revealed that the male are more active on social media than their female counterparts.
The men dominated the twitter platform while women are more concentrated on Snapchat. Snapchat offers on-demand geo-filters that allow users to custom-filter their photos, add effects and share videos with social media friends.
College students were found to consume social media more followed by high schooler and first degree graduates. Facebook and WhatsApp are the largely consumed platform at 88.5 percent and 88.6 percent respectively. Youtube followed at 51.2 percent and Google+ at 41.3 percent.
The report further indicated that most Kenyans aged between 21 and 35 spend an average of three hours per day on social media.
“According to the 2017/2018 Communication Authority of Kenya report, the number of mobile data subscriptions in Kenya currently stands at 40.7 million, 38 percent more than in the same period the previous year ,with the internet penetration in the country at 83 percent based on the Internet World Statistics,” added the report.
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“This indicates that a majority of Kenyans have access to the internet through their mobile phones, computers and internet enabled devices. This has led to the growth of internet consumption in Kenya at home (70 percent), at the office and on the go using mobile internet access or public WIFIs (58 percent).”
While mobile remains the top device used to access social media, most users stated that they used the platforms for entertainment, to gain information, education purposes and to search for jobs.
