Facebook Use By State - Archives

Facebook Use By State | Archives

July 26, 2010

So, you may have heard that Facebook recently reached 500 Million members worldwide. Where are they all located? The Guardian posted an interactive map showing countries based on the proportion of the population using Facebook. I thought it would be interesting to do something similiar for the United States.

Map no longer available :(

Facebook data from 2010 courtesy of Nick Burcher. State populations from Census estimates for 2009. I created the map in minutes using my favorite state statistics tool. [Notice how I used Facebook colors to boot!]

You can see the actual data in Excel format. It includes the actual number of Facebook users per state. Some interesting obsrvations:

DC has over three times as many Facebook users as residents! (possibly due to people saying they live in DC on Facebook but actually residing in Virginia, Maryland etc.)
Washington has the next highest percentage of Facebook users (58.3%)
New Mexico has the lowest percentage of Facebook users (22.9%)
California has the most Facebook users with over 15 Million.
Wyoming has the fewest Facebook users with only 218,000

Overall, I was surprised by the lack of the variability among states and the absence of strong regional patterns. There is only weak evidence that the West Coast and the NE are more Facebook friendly than the South. It seems to me that rural states are influenced by conflicting forces. On one hand, they are less tech savy in general. On the other hand, social networking is more attractive when you’re isolated from your friends and family. Please leave any observations you have in the comments.