It is harder than you may think to find good, reliable statistics on the demographics and habits of social media users. Fortunately, the always-thorough Pew Research Center has released some new figures on US social media user demographics. Pew surveyed 1,520 American adults - 18 years of age or older - about their typical social media network use. So what did they find out about we know about the typical social media user?

86% of adults surveyed were online, and of those, 79% were on Facebook, 32% on Instagram, 31% on Pinterest, 29% on LinkedIn and 21% on Twitter (as seen below). Though all of these number have grown year over year, Facebook has shown the most growth. The largest jump in growth was among older users: 62% of 65+ online adults are now on Facebook, a 14-point increase from 2015. However, Facebook has the highest saturation among younger users: 88% of internet users 18-29 use Facebook. Pew also found differences in Facebook use among different income levels, gender and rural vs. urban areas.

Of all the platforms, Instagram showed the greatest disparity between different age groups. In the 18-29 age group, 59% are on Instagram; for 30-49 - 33%; for 50-64 - 18%; and for 65+ only 8%. For Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, the greatest use was still by the youngest demographic, but the disparities between age groups were less.

Pew also surveyed the use habits for each social media platform. In terms of frequency, Facebook is visited daily by 76% of users, followed by 51% for Instagram, 42% for Twitter, 25% for Pinterest and 18% for LinkedIn. Respondents were also likely to utilize more than one network, though not as many as you may think. Only 56% of those surveyed used more than one of the five measured social media platforms. For those that only use one platform, 88% use Facebook as their single social media outlet. You can find even more information about these behaviors in the original report, on Pew's website.