Facebook's Growing Ethnic Diversity Mirrors U.S. Population

Facebook's Data Team has just published a report called "How Diverse is Facebook?" in which the company analyzed the surnames of U.S. users in order to estimate a breakdown of US Facebook users by ethnicity. The conclusions? While Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders have historically been more represented on Facebook compared to the US population, Facebook's user diversity is increasingly mirroring that of the overall US populace. The report also examined "saturation" by ethnic and racial groups, defined by Facebook as a fraction of its users as compared to a fraction of Internet users by ethnicity. Facebook found that Asian/Pacific Islanders have been much more likely to be on the site than Whites over time. Hispanics are currently 80 percent as likely as Whites to use Facebook and Black users are about as likely to be users as Whites.