Europe is the world area with the highest social networking penetration, according to a recent ComScore’s report. The “Europe Digital Year in Review” shows data like that social networking monthly penetration in Europe reached 84.4 percent of all European internet users.

Europe’s leaders are Turkey and Poland. Turkey’s high penetration is related to Facebook’s important role in this country, as 90.4% of Turkish Internet users browse this site at least once every month. It’s followed by the UK, at 81.7 percent. Spain is one of the countries with the lowest penetration of Facebook, together with Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands and Russia.

Why? Because these countries have a local social network. In fact, in Poland, the Netherlands and Russia this network is still above Facebook in terms of penetration. Depending on the source, Facebook has become the leading site in Poland. According to ComScore, in April 2010, Facebook eclipsed the leading social networks in Portugal (Hi5) and Germany (StudiVZ/VZ-Netzwerke) to assume the #1 position among social networking sites in both those markets.

The previous year, Facebook grabbed the #1 position in Spain (from Tuenti) and in Austria (from Netlog). Anyway, Facebook is the third site in almost all European countries, only behind Google and Microsoft. Social networking is also the online activity that grows the fastest in Europe, while instant messaging and auction sites are declining.