social media is making us more social

a study in Texas has decided that social media is making us more social.  Who would have knew?  Good news for facebook, I think, because their privacy issues & ownership of our data still give me great concern.  However social networks do provide a great platform for us to keep in touch with friends & family, no matter where they are in the world!  It seems everyone likes to complete their relationship status, as per the pie chart below:

Pie charts from “All the Single Ladies …”

The author of the study, S. Craig Watkins, wrote a post Got Facebook? A New Study Examines the World’s Biggest Social Network

Earlier this year H. Erin Lee, a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, and I began combing through the data of a new national survey we conducted of young Facebook users. Our goal was simple. We wanted to learn more about the complex social transitions that characterize life in the age of social media. You hear a lot about young people and social media these days. Unfortunately, much of the public attention, scrutiny, and hysteria treats young people as a monolith, an undifferentiated mass. Based on my earlier work and the publication of The Young and the Digital I understood that young people’s social media behaviors are dynamic and often interact with factors like gender, class, geography, and race and ethnicity.

As young people move from one life stage to the next their motivation for using social media evolves as does the networks they maintain and the content they share. Whereas engagement with Facebook four years ago was principally about connecting to a small sphere of friends the use of the platform today includes a broader range of activities, such as communicating with friends and family, collaborating on school work, browsing photos and videos, playing games and quizzes, consuming news, and participating in civic life.

Relationship Status on facebook

It was picked up in PhysOrg.com in Social media actually strengthen social ties, various demographics engage differently, study says:

The study, led by S. Craig Watkins, associate professor of radio-TV-film, is the first to examine the distinct ways in which engagement with Facebook is evolving into a multi-faceted social experience. Radio-TV-Film doctoral candidate H. Erin Lee helped with the survey design and data analysis.

“Our findings indicate that Facebook is not supplanting face-to-face interactions among friends, family and colleagues,” said Watkins. “In fact, we believe there is sufficient evidence that social media afford opportunities for new expressions of friendship, intimacy and community.”

Watkins surveyed 900 current college students and recent college graduates across the country to find out what and with whom these Facebook users communicate, the influence of gender and age, and the role of news, information and entertainment (for example, quizzes, games, photos, etc.).

Whether it’s a wall post, photo, comment or news link, young people’s engagement with Facebook is driven primarily by a desire to stay connected and involved in the lives of family and friends who live near and far, or have recently entered their lives.

When asked to choose the top three activities most engaged in on Facebook, 66 percent of respondents listed “posting status updates,” 60 percent listed “posting comments/likes to my profile” and nearly half, 49 percent, listed “posting messages and other content to friends’ profiles.”

When asked about the type of communication they engage in on Facebook, 47 percent of survey participants cited their communication with friends who live in a different state or country as “very important,” while 28 percent cited communicating with friends who live in the same city as “very important.” Thirty-five percent of survey participants cited communicating with family members, such as parents, aunts and uncles, as “very important.”

“Using Facebook to strengthen familial ties indicates that boomer parents are now quite active, leading us to believe that the generational gap in social media use is closing,” said Watkins.

British journalist David McCandless makes Facebook breakup chart by analyzing 10K status updates

Men tend to use Facebook for functional activities, such as sharing news, information and task-oriented content. Men are less likely to share photos on Facebook, but when they do they’re more likely to be photos connected to their personal interests, such as hobbies, animals or scenery. In comparison to women, men are 8 percent more likely to post video clips to their Facebook profile.

Women tend toward affectionate uses of Facebook, such as sharing personal photos from family events. Women in the survey viewed photos as an important way to share fun and important personal experiences with friends.

Over the last year, Facebook has come under intense scrutiny concerning its privacy policies. While Watkins’ study found young Facebook users are relatively open to sharing personal information on their profiles, individuals tend to censor themselves more as they transition from college to the professional world.

Of the personal information individuals are able to share on their profile, Watkins found “relationship status” is widely shared (84 percent), as is “favorite media,” including information about their favorite books, TV shows and movies. Compared to graduates, college students were more likely to list their “religious views” and “political views” on their profiles, suggesting that as users move from college to the professional world they become less likely to share personal information that may be perceived as controversial. When it comes to sharing what may be considered personal information men are much more likely than women, for example, to share their political views (49 percent vs. 36 percent) as well as their religious views (51 percent vs. 43 percent).

I’d like to leave you with a funny Aussie ad about social networking.  You will understand why I left Australia a long time ago.  Enjoy….

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