Skip to main content

Turns out Americans aren’t the most addicted Starbucks-drinking, social users in the world

starbucks wifiSocial media is massively popular, but as it turns out, people in the U.S. aren’t as hopelessly addicted to the Internet as you might think – at least compared to some other countries. Sure, being less bad doesn’t make you good, but it’s kind of comforting to know there are other people even more addled by constant check-ins and tweets than we are. A new study by Local Measure looked at how often people in Starbucks across the world used the Internet, and how they used it.  The results show the U.S. as the fourth most rabid user base; it lags far behind Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines when it comes to posting on social media, at least based on the data collected at these Starbucks locations.

Screen Shot 2013-06-14 at 10.23.31 AM

Now, the study only looks at how often people are going on social media at Starbucks, so if people in those countries are more apt to log in at the cafe than people in the U.S., the results could be skewed. But Local Measure founder Jonathan Barouch is confident that the information is indicative of a wider social trend. “Facebook recently released stats saying that Starbucks has one of the highest check in rates of all brands, so to me it seems to suggest a cultural difference in that Asian consumers have an even higher propensity to share on social than Americans. This is particularly pronounced in food and retail.”

Recommended Videos

This research shows that people from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines put more social media content up than people in the U.S., but the survey also included Australia, which looks like it’s populated by a swarm of swarthy Luddites according to the results – even the United States had more than double the amount of posts.

Since Local Measure’s research does only center on Starbucks, you might want to chalk it up to cultural differences (maybe Malaysians just love Starbucks Wi-Fi more passionately than people in the U.S.?) but other research supports the idea that Americans are outpaced in social media posting. For example, even though the U.S. has the highest number of Facebook users, Socialbakers found that other countries have a higher usage rate when it comes to Pages activity. Both Brazil and Egypt had more activity than the U.S.  Screen Shot 2013-06-14 at 10.40.49 AMAnd even though people in China aren’t supposed to have access to Twitter, so many Chinese people use VPNs and other methods to subvert the firewall that China actually has the most active Twitter users in the world.

Studies like the Local Measure Starbucks Social Index demonstrate that the obsession with social media isn’t a North American thing – it’s a global phenomenon.

Kate Knibbs
Former Contributor
Kate Knibbs is a writer from Chicago. She is very happy that her borderline-unhealthy Internet habits are rewarded with a…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more