Made-up social media stats

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizettegreco/279539306/>

Seeing as most media reports concerning social media seem to rely on no evidence whatsoever, I thought I'd pinch an idea from Josie Fraser, and just make up some stats (she had some wonderful ones about retweeting). Feel free to use any of these, remember they have no basis in truth, but when has that stopped people? I expect to see them in an interview with Baroness Greenfield any day now.

1. 7 out of 13 people confess that they would rather go on holiday with their iPad than their spouse
2. Every day £27 billion in productivity is lost through people using social media at work
3. 4 out of 9 people admit to having tweeted during sex
4. If you put all of Stephen Fry's followers end to end they would stretch from Bolton to Biarritz and then back up to La Rochelle.
5. 5 out of 4 young people admit that they use social media to cheat on assignments
6. If Facebook were a country and each person had ten foot square, it would be the size of 27 Wales.
7. 76% of all Twitter accounts are young ladies in bikins selling iPads
8. Excessive use of social media causes a 33.45% inflammation of the hippocampus
9. 88% of all teenagers say they would rather chat on Facebook than stroke a puppy
10. Using social media for more than 20 seconds a day increases your chances of cancer by 37%
11. Using iPads (only iPads mind, no other tablet) in class increased student performance by 2000%
12. Children who play computer games for more than 20 minutes per day are 17% less likely to recognise their mother in a crowd

 I'll stop there shall I?

Comments

[Michael Feldstein]

Remember, over 71% of all statistics are just plain made up.

[Josiefraser]

I used fake stats for my live tweeted talk for the 140 Character Conference http://lon.140conf.com/schedule - I was speaking on 'the art & science of the retweet (RT)' (coincidentally enough, Stephen Fry spoke as well)

My fake stats included:

9/10 twitter users agree @josiefraser 's fake stats as useful/fulfilling as comparable poorly researched/non-referenced stats on twitter

83% of tweets about RTs will be RT'd by at least one other person

RTing tweets that stay "do not RT this" break twitter & account for 16.3% of twitter downtime

The average celebrity death generates an RT string of 5.5 people

Like yours Martin although suspect statisticians from The Institute for Cancer Caused by the Modern World would dispute the fake status of at least one of them.

[Scott Leslie]

"4 out of 9 people admit to having tweeted during sex" - I think your numbers here are low - how are you substantiating this claim? Citation Needed!

[MrSimonWood]

Is Wales, like sheep, its own plural? 83% of people don't realise that, you know. (83% of made up stats are 83%).

[Josiefraser]

Turns out the answer to number 6 is actually 175 Wales. Yes, I am that nerdy. Also, I think number 7 is the one guy. He just has access to a lot of pictures of bikini ladies.

[Rebecca]

I think you need to be following @madupstats on Twitter.

[Rebecca]

Or even the correctly spelled @madeupstats

[Dean]

100% of people die.

Now that is the most accurate statistic there is.