Britain's social media users are a voyeuristic bunch

According to a recent survey by first direct Britain's social media users are more voyeurs than active participants when it comes to social media.

When asked how often they viewed their accounts like Facebook and Twitter, users were most likely to check up to at least once every two to three hours, but only once a fortnight or less when it came to updating their status.  And more than two in five said that the main reason they use social media sites is to keep up-to-date with what their friends are doing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, with the world of social media lacking face to face interaction, only two thirds of people worry how they were perceived online, whereas 94% of those asked were concerned in real life one to one conversations.  Men, it seems, are even less concerned about the impression they make in social media with just under half saying it's unimportant to them.

Whilst the majority of those surveyed hadn't updated their Facebook ‘relationship status' (58.4%) nearly 35% felt that their relationships were more official once they'd told their online community.  In fact over 6% have had an argument with their partner as a result of them not updating their ‘relationship status' online.

Naturally, people are still connecting with their friends and family using more traditional methods, with the most popular frequency for getting in touch being two to four times per week via email or phone.  However, the survey also highlighted that over 45% of people who use social media would spend up to 30 minutes on social media sites daily; whereas just 30% said they'd spend the same amount of time with their friends and family each day.

Rebecca Dye, Social Media Manager at first direct commented: "We know that the key to our amazing customer service is that we have great conversations with our customers.  It's no longer enough to only have these conversations over the phone as more and more people join the social revolution.

Even though people are watching more than engaging I'm sure this will change in the future and the brands, like first direct, that have a social media presence are more likely to do well.