North Carolinians can't get enough of social media — propelling the state to the top of a national list. Researchers studied online habits and found the state was the "most social media obsessed" in the country, according to figures released Thursday, April 7.
The marketing agency Hennessey Digital said it came up with the list after it studied internet data over the past two years. It found "Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat" were the most popular U.S. social media sites by search volume.
Then, analysts studied the number of times people Googled those platforms "in each state to see which ones had the most searches per month for every 1,000 people," officials said in a news release.
North Carolina — home to over 10 million — came out on top, with people looking up social media platforms more than 9 million times each month. That's about 867.87 searches per 1,000 residents, results show.
So, which online platform was the state most curious about? Facebook topped the list with 6.12 million average monthly searches in North Carolina.
"Instagram comes in second with 823,000 searches a month and Twitter in third with 550,000 monthly searches," officials said.
Those figures mirror the nationwide trends, which rank Facebook before Instagram and Twitter in terms of search popularity. Snapchat was the lowest-ranking of the social media platforms studied.
Though it didn't match North Carolina's level of interest in social media sites, neighboring Tennessee landed the No. 2 spot in the overall rankings. Rounding out the top five were Maine, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
" Hawaii was found to be the least social media obsessed state, with 440.34 searches per 1,000 people," officials said.
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