Few 18 to 24-year-olds make use of Twitter compared with the proportion of this age group that has a social networking profile, a new report has shown.

Research conducted by the Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) and the Lubin School of Business's Interactive and Direct Marketing Lab at Pace University found that 99 per cent of Generation Y consumers have an active profile on at least one social network.

However, 22 per cent of these maintain an account on Twitter, indicating that there may be substantial opportunities available to marketers targeting this age group, said Michael Della Penna, co-founder and executive chairman of the PMN.

"Twitter dominates the news, but clearly we're only touching the surface of its potential as a marketing vehicle," he explained, adding: "There is a tremendous opportunity now for marketers to develop strategies to get this important group active on Twitter."

The study also revealed that 85 per cent of Generation Y Twitter users follow their friends on the site, while 54 per cent follow celebrity members and 29 per cent follow family members and companies.

In the UK, Twitter is now the fifth most visited social network, according to web monitoring firm Hitwise.