A new forecast released by eMarketer has concluded that over 50% of Western Europe's population will be on social media in three years. The highest rate of social media usage came from the Netherlands, where 72.3% of internet users use a social network, followed by Norway and the UK. However, this order isn't expected to remain consistent due to Italy's high adoption rate meaning it is likely to have the highest rate of usage by 2020. Italy's rise has been attributed to newly available data for consumers, and recently adopted faster internet speeds. Surprisingly, France and Germany come quite far down the list with just 55 and 57% usage, respectively. This is due to cultural differences involving privacy concerns and a mistrust of global sites such as Facebook or Google, whilst Germany also has a conservative culture when revealing personal information.
