• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 22, 2011

There appears to be a new digital divide, but this one has nothing to do with socioeconomics. 

For reasons that are not altogether clear, women now dominate men in their use of social media as a communication tool, according to a new study from Harris Interactive conducted on behalf of mobile VOIP provider Rebtel.

Among online adults, 68% of women now communicate via social media, compared to 54% of men in the United States. By Harris Interactive's estimation, that translates to approximately 75 million women who communicate with friends using social networks versus 57 million men.

"Our findings show that men tend to lag behind women when it comes to communicating with others through social media, which debunks other recent studies that suggest that men are more savvy networkers between the sexes," said Andreas Bernstrom, CEO of Rebtel.

Among those online adults who use social media to communicate, one out of five -- 19% -- expect to use social media more in the near future to communicate with these groups, representative of approximately 27 million American adults. Of this group men -- 23% -- are significantly more likely to indicate this than women -- 16%.

That said, related findings show that 11% expect to use social media less in the near future to communicate, while 70% expect to use social media the same amount in the near future to communicate with these groups, with women -- 74% -- being significantly more likely to indicate this than men, at 65%.

Specifically, among the 93% of the U.S. online adult population that communicates with family other than in-person, 60% of women communicate with family through social media, compared to just 42% of men. That equals about 67 million women communicating with family via social media versus 44 million men.

Evan among the 58% of the U.S. online adult population that communicate with work colleagues other than in-person, 34% of women -- compare to 22% of men -- use this method to stay in touch. According to Harris Interactive, that comes out to 21 million women who communicate with work colleagues compared to 16 million men.

When given the option to choose one communication method to stay in touch with friends (other than in-person), 18% of women -- compared to 12% of men -- choose social media.

Men are now slightly more likely to use phones to communicate: 75% versus 73% of women.