States most Obsessed with Social Media

News Release from Hennessey Digital, April, 2022

North Hollywood, CA – North Carolina is the most social media-obsessed state in the US, according to new research.

The study conducted by digital marketing agency Hennessey Digital, analyzed the number of Google searches for social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in each state to see which ones had the most searches per month for every 1,000 people.

It found that North Carolina was the most social media-obsessed state, with 9,011,600 social media searches per month. When measured against the state’s population this results in an average of 867.87 social media-related searches for every 1,000 people.

A 2018 study found that the state’s favorite social media platform was Google Plus; however, after it was shut down in 2019, Facebook now takes the top spot with 6,120,000 monthly searches on average. Instagram comes in second with 823,000 searches a month and Twitter in third with 550,000 monthly searches.

Tennessee comes in second place, following closely behind with 863.9 searches per 1,000 people. This is thanks to more than 5,848,600 social media searches every month for the past two years, nearly as many searches as there are people in the state.

Facebook led as the most popular platform with 4,090,000 searches a month. Instagram and Twitter were the next most popular social media platforms in the state with 450,000 and 301,000 searches a month respectively.

With 856.69 social media searches for every 1,000 people, Maine comes in third place and 1,146,600 social media searches every month. In 2021, the FBI began enlisting Maine residents to report hate crimes using social media through an aggressive campaign from the FBI’s Boston division. Facebook was the most popular platform in the state with over 1,000,000 searches a month. Instagram and Twitter were the next most popular social media platforms in the state with 90,500 and 60,500 searches a month respectively.

The New England state of New Hampshire comes in fourth place, with 847.8 social media searches for every 1,000 people with 1,150,000 total searches every month.

New Mexico sits in fifth place with 839.92 searches for every 1,000 people, with 1,760,000 searches on average every month.

On the other end of the scale, Hawaii was found to be the least social media-obsessed state, with 440.34 searches per 1,000 people. Alaska was the second least obsessed with 585.54 searches per 1,000 people and Louisiana was next with 596.16 searches per 1,000 people.

Facebook sees more than 151,000,000 monthly searches every month in the US, making it the most popular platform in the country by far, with Instagram the next biggest with more than 30,400,000 searches every month. Twitter was third was 16,600,600 searches a month on average and TikTok came next with 7,480,000 searches a month.

Snapchat was the least popular out of the platforms studied, with only 1,830,000 searches every month on average across the U.S.

A spokesperson from Hennessey Digital commented on the study: “It’s interesting to see a variety of states from all four corners of the U.S. in the top ten for social media obsession. It’s also fascinating to see how popular Facebook remains nearly 20 years after it was founded, despite challenges from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok. The Meta social media platform is so popular that in many states it receives 10 times the searches of the next most popular social media site.”

The study was conducted by leading digital marketing agency Hennessey Digital.