A growing number of Europeans are now accessing social networking websites from their mobile phones.

This is according to new figures released by comScore, which show that 12.1 million people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain used mobile social networks in November – representing a 152 per cent increase year-on-year.

The UK was found to have the highest rate of mobile social networking usage among its consumers at 9.2 per cent of all mobile phone owners, followed by Spain and Italy.

According to comScore, the research also found that a growing proportion of mobile social network users are female, with this demographic now outnumbering males on mobile social media sites.

"This development is encouraging for the future of the mobile internet," remarked Alistair Hill, analyst at comScore M:Metrics.

"Social networking is taking the mobile internet out of the early adopter demographic and into the mainstream."
Separate figures released by comScore earlier this month revealed that Europe is now home to 28 per cent of the global online population, equivalent to 282.65 million web users.