Britain is the global leader in terms of its use of social-networking sites with 52% of adults in the UK using Facebook and similar sites, according to a survey from Pew Research Center released on 12 December.
USA and Russia come next, with half of their adult population using social media networks, followed by the Czech Republic and Spain, according to the findings of the 2012 Pew Global Attitudes Survey.
In 19 out of the 21 countries surveyed, about three-in-ten or more people use Facebook, including 52% in the UK, 50% in the USA, 50% in Russia, 49% in Spain and 49% in the Czech Republic. At the other end of the scale are India and Pakistan with single digit usage of social media of 6% and 4% respectively.
In each country, social media use varies across the different age groups, with the gap between the younger group (less than 30 years-old) and the older group (older than 50 years-old) being particularly wide (more than 50 percentage points) in Italy, Poland, the UK and Greece.
Social media sites are most used for sharing views about music and movies, with community issues, sports, politics and religion being the other popular topics. In Britain, 49% use social media to share views about music and movies and 36% and 35% use social-networking sites to share views about community issues and sports.
Smartphone popularity is also on the rise on a global scale, with nearly half of Brits, Americans and Japanese owning a smartphone. Of the smartphone owners in the UK 68% use their phones for connecting with social networks, a practice that is most common in Egypt (79%), Mexico (74%) and Greece (72%).
The 21-nation survey was conducted from 17 March until 20 April 2012.