There are few social facts that spread themselves out evenly across social class. Most everything — how healthy we are, what we do for leisure, how we dress, etc — is correlated with income. Twitter, I learned today, is an exception. According to a Pew study, internet users across a wide array of income brackets are using Twitter at about the same rate.
Income and % of internet users who use Twitter:
When we look at variables that correlate with income, however, such as race and education, we see an uneven distribution.
Race and % of internet users who use Twitter:
Education and % of internet users who use Twitter:
So people with more education are more likely to use Twitter, but Whites (who, on average, get more education than Blacks and Hispanics) are less likely. There’s something really interesting going on here. Any idea what?
Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
