Gender Differences in the Use of Facebook

 In the article "Got Facebook? Investigating What's Social About Social Media," by Dr. S. Craig Watkins and Dr. H. Erin Lee, they looked at the different people using Facebook, and how different identity factors affect their use of the site. In their study, they looked mainly at the difference between how college students and college graduates use the social networking site. Besides those two factors, the researchers also looked at how age, race, and gender affected people's use of Facebook. For this entry, I'm going to focus on how gender affects people's use of Facebook.

  In the beginning of the article, the researchers shared the demographic chart stating the statistic of college educated Facebook users, 38.9% of users were male and 61.1% of users were female. I thought this was interesting. The use of this site in both genders is close to being split down the middle, and later in the article it explains reasons why more women may be drawn to a social networking and communicating site.

  The two main themes in the difference in use of Facebook between the genders is stated early in the article, and later there is evidence given to back it up. First, the researchers found that women are more likely to use the site to share content and communicate with friends and family. They are more likely to post photos, and those photos posted are more likely to be about family related events. If they post videos, they contain content that is more friendship oriented. Women are more likely than men to have certain beliefs in who it is important to communicate with on Facebook. Women think it is very important to communicate with family and also with friends who may live in a different state or country. This clearly explains why more women than men use Facebook - they see it as a tool to communicate and share with friends and family.

  Men, on the other hand, are more likely than women to communicate information about pop culture, news, or current events. They are also found to be more likely than women to list their political and religious views on their profiles. They also have more links to current events or news related content. While women were more likely to post photos, men are more likely to post videos. These videos are often work related in comparison to being friendship related. When men do post photos, they are more often to do with a person's hobbies or personal interests. The researchers also looked at use of and activity in certain groups on Facebook. Men were more likely than women to participate in civic or political activities online, and if they belonged to a group were more likely than women to post links or notes on that group's wall or participate in discussion boards.

  These differences can tell us a few things. Women seem to value personal communication on Facebook more than men. Men seem to value the easy sharing of interests and current events. This site is so widely used, it is interesting to see how people utilize it in their lives, and what factors of their identity affect their use.