Study: Romanians spend half hour a day on social networks, tweak online persona to appear smarter, prettier, cooler

Romanians spend about half an hour every day on social networks to update their account, post pictures or simply read, according to a recent study by Mercury Research for Intel. Laptops are the favorite device to connect to social media for Romanians, followed by smartphones and tablet PCs.

Around 40 percent of the people interviewed (a total of 419 people in urban areas) post at least once or twice a day on their social media channels. Facebook continues to be the number one social tool, followed by Hi5, Google+, Netlog and Twitter. Romanians tend to post pictures and information from their holidays, from sports events and when with whom they are having lunch/dinner. Half of the respondents voice their opinion on social media, but for 40 percent of them post in order to feel connected to other people. For most people, virtual friends are only virtual, as most of them say they spend time in the real world with only a quarter of their virtual friends. Only 2 percent spend time offline with their online friends. Similarly to elsewhere in the world, Romanians tend to create a slightly different, improved online persona. Romanian women post only pictures where they look good – 91 percent of respondents think so. Another frequent lie on social networks is pretending to be more intelligent, while the third favorite fib is only checking in to fancy places. editor@romania-insider.com