Nibba group: Characteristics of Facebook users

Characteristics of Facebook users

Past research has focused on differences in Facebook behavior relating to gender, personality, social status, age, and race. Looking at gender, a large study by Hargittai (2007) on a heterogeneous sample of 1060 first-year undergraduate students in the US showed that men were not more likely to use Facebook than women. This finding was confirmed by a smaller study on 116 US students by Raacke and Bonds-Raacke (2008). However, a study by Lewis et al. (2008), on a sample of 1710 US students, showed that women were more likely than men to maintain a private profile. In sum, these studies suggest that research on gender differences should focus on Facebook behavior, rather than on the decision to join Facebook. But this remains, for now, only a suggestion, as these studies are all focused on students and are performed in the US. We should proceed with caution before generalizing any of these research findings to other countries and other demographic groups. Additional international research is required. Some research on Facebook deals directly with personality. For instance, a small study on 97 US students by Ross et al. (2009) indicated that extraversion was positively related to Facebook use, which is in line with more general research by Correa et al. (2010) and Wilson et al. (2010) on the link between extraversion and the use of SNSs. Openness to experiences was also found to relate positively to SNS use, especially for mature individuals (Correa et al., 2010). Conscientiousness (Wilson et al., 2010) and emotional stability (Correa et al., 2010), however, related negatively with SNS use. In sum, our understanding of the personality of Facebook users remains partial. As SNSs differ in content, target audiences, and use, it is not evident that general research on different SNSs is easily applicable to Facebook. Our understanding may thus benefit from a more elaborate analysis of personality characteristics of Facebook users and non-users. But besides gender and personality, future research should also look into other demographic differences between users and non-users. Despite the articles mentioned above, it is clear that we require more studies on the link between personal characteristics and Facebook use. At this point, many of the studies are either based on a broader range of SNSs, on small homogeneous sample sizes, or solely in the US. This requires caution in generalizing research findings. Moreover, we should consider the year when the articles were published. This is a comment that will also be found in many other sections of this review. It is, however, not our intention to claim that the conclusions provided by these articles are by definition outdated and should therefore be suppressed. Any comment regarding the year of publication should be considered as an opportunity to revisit these studies and to investigate whether any changes have occurred due to the fast increase in Facebook membership in recent years, the frequent changes in the platform’s features and settings, or consumers’ experience with the platform. This may be particularly relevant when looking at personal characteristics, as early adopters may differ from early or late majority.

Building and maintaining a Facebook network

There is already a significant body of research focusing on how users present themselves on Facebook and how they interact with friends. Many interesting research findings have therefore already been provided. But still, opportunities for further improvement and deepening of our knowledge are noticed. SNSs such as Facebook visualize one’s network (Donath, 2007). A quick search on Facebook reveals that users vary widely in the number of friends they have, ranging from only one to more than a thousand. Facebook reports the average number of friends is 130 (Facebook, 2012b). Therefore, it has been stated that online Facebook friends are not necessarily offline friends and that the use of the word “friend” by Facebook has expanded the meaning of the word (Wang and Wellman, 2010). However, our understanding of this matter is at least partial. Early research by Lewis and West (2009) found that users with a large number of Facebook friends do not necessarily have the same number of close friends in everyday life, which supports the claim mentioned above. It is important to note that this conclusion is based on interviews with 16 students from one university in the UK. Support for the statement could also be drawn from Wang and Wellman’s (2010) study of a sample of 677 US households, indicating that both close and (more) distant friends were among one’s online friends. The downside to this research is that it did not solely focus on Facebook, but rather focused on having online friends in general