Dr Aleks Krotoski, presenter of BBC2 series The Virtual Revolution, discovered that the northern city's online population is 24 per cent more likely to visit the social networking site to chat with pals or play online games than the UK's national average, reports the Mirror.
There are more than 23 million users Facebook users in Britain.
Sunderland band The Futureheads has attracted 8,100 fans to their Facebook page, while 5,350 users have signed onto the city's World Cup 2018 site.
Durham, Oldham, Manchester and Llandudno are other cities in the top 10 Facebook users list.
The bottom 10 were in Scotland, with Kilmarnock and Motherwell having the fewest users.