Almost half of people in the 18 to 34 age group use social networks rather than search engines when looking for content, according to the Nation of Sharers study from Internet media platform Blinkx.
The platform polled more than 2,000 Britons and found that 85% of them share content on a regular basis through their social network feeds. Around 57% of users aged over 55 also share content online, the study showed. Irish people turned out to be most active as 85% of them share content on their social network profiles.
The most commonly shared video content includes music, shopping and animal videos, with 93% of users in the 18 to 24 age group watching shared music videos.
It seems that the reliance on search is declining as users prefer social networks over search engines when looking for content online, said Jonathan Freeman, psychologist at the Goldsmiths University. Interestingly, younger users are less likely to rely on search and tend to rely more on recommendations through social networks, either from their own network and friends or from social media commentators.
The advent of social networks and the increasing use of powerful connected devices have significantly changed the way we interact with the Internet, said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and chief strategy officer at Blinkx. Users are now able to process long streams of information, such as Twitter feeds and Facebook pages; a universe of content delivered to users by their friends and the people they follow, and this content is increasingly accessed by smartphones and tablets, Chandratillake commented.