South Korea: Among Young Generation, Liberals Use Twitter, While Conservatives Prefer Facebook

The Korea Herald via Asia News Network

13:30 JST, February 18, 2023

Liberals in their early 20s are more likely to use Twitter, while conservatives in the same age group prefer Facebook, according to a local study released recently.

Two out of 5 South Koreans aged between 19 and 24 are on their smartphones for more than five hours a day, according to an online poll of 2,214 people of this age group conducted in July last year by the state-funded National Youth Policy Institute.

They mostly use YouTube, KakaoTalk, Instagram and Facebook and come across a lot of fake news on social media, the research institute said in its report on young people’s media use and policy study.

According to the survey results, 98.6% of respondents had smartphones, and 43.4% said they use their smartphones for more than five hours a day.

To a multiple-choice question on average daily smartphone use, 19.2% said they used their smartphones between three and four hours; 15.7% between two and three hours; and 14.7% between four and five hours. Only 7.1% said they use their smartphones for less than two hours a day.

YouTube was where they spent the most time, followed by KakaoTalk and other messaging services, social media, music and games.

Eighty-six percent of the respondents said they used social media in the past month, and Instagram was their top choice.

Some 42.5% said they were always using Instagram, while 10.8% said they were always on Facebook, and 9.6% always on Twitter.

TikTok and Kakao Story were the least popular among the five social media platforms mentioned on the survey, with 72.2% and 82.5%, respectively, saying they don’t use them.

As for Twitter, 42.6% of women and 26.4% of men said they use it.

By political orientation, 52.5% of those who identified themselves as liberals said they used Twitter, compared to 23.8% of conservatives.

By specific age, 20-year-olds made up the highest percentage of Twitter users (38.6%).

Facebook, on the other hand, was used more by men (54.8%) than women (35.7%).

Among those who identified themselves as politically conservative, 48.7% used Facebook, compared to 46.7% of centrists and 41.6% of liberals.

The older they were, the more likely they were to use Facebook.

College students made up a lower share of Facebook users (43.1%) than non-college students (53%).

Instagram was more popular among women with 93.9% saying they use it, compared to 88.5% of men.

The percentage of Instagram users was similar across different political orientations.

Sixty percent of all respondents said they came across false or fabricated information on social media, while 59% said they saw such information on video streaming platforms.

A whopping 47.6% said they encountered expressions of hatred online in the past month.

Expressions of hate toward men (77.2%) and women (77.5%) were most commonly encountered online, followed by those toward homosexuals (68.9%); the disabled (58.2%), the elderly (51.3%) and foreigners (45.7%).

The researchers who authored the report said that to help improve the media literacy of this age group, universities should set up a relevant course in their general education curriculum for freshmen. The media should also distribute content to help reduce hate speech and cyber violence, the researchers added.