Social networks
As in other countries, exact data on the use of social network sites (SNS) is scarce. There is no information about visits or unique clients for these services. Since 2014, the use of SNS has been documented in the Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute. In 2015, some 62 percent of the population used Facebook, 58 percent YouTube and 52 percent WhatsApp. Instagram was much less popular, only 11 percent used this photo-SNS “last week”. There are important differences regarding age, but not gender. More than 80 percent of Austrians in the age group of 18 to 24 years used Facebook, and 83 percent YouTube. Twitter was much less popular even in this age group (24 percent).
More than half of the 18 to 24 years old Austrians used Facebook as a source of news (55 percent), while this percentage is small for the entire population (36 percent). Among the younger age group, 30 percent confirmed that their main source of news is SNS, which is top rank in front of online media (19 percent) and television (16 percent). In the entire population, television is the main source of news for 30 percent of the population.