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Social Networking
Sites And College
students
Facebook And Myspace

This paper will inform you on how much college

students use the internet as a way of
communication rather than face to face
communication interaction.

April Dunisch
10/19/2008
Mary Klein
Senior Seminar
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Imagine a world where the only way to communicate was to talk face-to-face

with someone. This used to be true way back when, before technology was invented

and even before “snail mail”. Snail Mail- the word used to describe mail sent

through the post office because it takes a few days to make it to the destination.

This paper is going to inform the class just how often we use social interacting sties

rather than face-to-face communication.

The two sites I will have primary focus on are Facebook, and Myspace. The

reason is because most college students use one or the other, sometimes both. The

main objective is to see how students use the social interacting websites rather

than face-to-face communication, also to see if the sites somehow coincide with one

another. What I mean by coincide, is to see if the two sites have anything in

common with one another. Dictionary.com defines Social Networking as- the use of

a website to connect with people who share personal or professional interests,

place of origin or education at a particular school.

As mentioned earlier, you used to have to communicate fully on face-to-face

interaction. When the idea of “Snail Mail” was introduced, people used that more

often than talking one on one. There was many reasons for this, one major one

being because many people had a busy schedule and couldn’t get to the location of

the other person to tell them what they needed to say, as well as the fact that

people could than look at the words that were sent to them and hold on to what was

said as long as they wanted to. Landlines later became the wave of the future,

because you were able to physically speak to someone, without having to have

them directly in front of you. This was later replaced by E-mail, because it offered a
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way to communicate and still multi-task, it also allowed the message to get to the

intended receiver faster than “Snail Mail” ever could.

E-mail was pretty much replaced by instant messengers. This allowed people

to talk to one another in real time, rather than having to wait for a response through

an email. Instant messengers is a form of communication tool that is used to get the

message out quickly and make it still feel like you are talking to them in real life.

Much advancement in the messengers has allowed people to actually physically talk

and see one another via a mic and a webcam. Recently, however, messengers are

becoming more obsolete because of the availability to chat through Facebook and

Myspace. Facebook has a messenger system built into the page, so it doesn’t

require a download which is more convient because you don’t have to go through

more steps just to be able to talk to one another. Myspace also has a messenger

system, but it requires a download. The positive part of that messenger is the fact

that it alerts you when you have a new comment, message, or friend request.

Before I go too far into the topic, I want to explain a little about the two sites I

am focusing on. There are many differences within the sites as well as similarities,

and both were started for different purposes.

Facebook was originated on February 4, 2004 and its main intended use was

for college students that would like to connect with other college students that they

knew in the past. It was for a reconnection more than anything else. Facebook later

became opened to high school students, than recently it opened up to the public.

Facebook has many different tools, from the “wall” where you can leave comments

to your friends, down to the applications that you can add to your page.

Myspace was originated in 2003, but the soul purpose wasn’t for social

interaction amongst all users like it is today. In fact it was intended for bands to get
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there music out to the public and gain support. It was there way of developing a fan

base and finding a label to work with. Anyone that is over the age of 14 is able to

use this site. There are many features on Myspace as well, there is a bulletin board

where you can put anything you want up and all your friends will see, there is a

place to blog your ideas and thoughts and you can change your layout of the

background on your main page as well as profile page.

There are many sites someone could choose to interact on. Knowing this, it

made me wonder what made people choose the site they pick, how they decide

what information to put on their page as well as how they decide on what the layout

image will be (Myspace). With this I wanted to focus on a person’s demographics,

to see how big of a role it played when choosing a site. I found that there was many

different ways that demographics affected how someone registered to what

information they put on their page.

According to Linda Jackson, the gender of a person plays a huge part in how

and why they sign up for a website. In a study that she conducted, more females

used the popular networking sites than men did. The common reason was because

they wanted to keep in contact with family and friends that either live too far away

to go and talk to or there just isn’t enough time in their schedules to allow for them

to meet up. Another reason is because sometimes they just want to pop on and say

hello rather than sitting and talking to them for a long period of time.

Another type of demographic that plays a big role in the sites people choose

to pick is race. In a study done at Northwestern University, it was found that people

identify themselves as white, are more likely to have a Facebook account while

Hispanics tend to use Myspace more often. Asians were found to not use Myspace

as much as other races. What I found different about this study is the there was no
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statics on how black people choose what site they pick to use. Seeing as how there

are a lot more black people in the world these days, you would think that there

would be some sort of static on how frequent the choose one site over another.

There is a third demographic that plays a major role on what site a person

would use. The idea of how educated a person is plays a factor in how they use the

sites. Seeing as the overall attitude from parents about Facebook is positive, (this is

shown through the fact that you can find parents using Facebook as well), it’s more

common for the more educated students to use Facebook. The opposite is true for

Myspace, parents usually have a negative view on Myspace, which gives the

impression that someone’s parents weren’t as educated as much and so maybe the

person using the site won’t be either. Also, the overall layout of Myspace isn’t as

structurally organized as Facebook. This could mean that the people using the site

are not as well organized either.

The social interaction sties are more commonly used by college students that

are living on campus rather than commuters. (Commuter- students that are living

off campus, usually with parents or friends, many times they have to drive a

distance to the school.) There are many reason’s for this, on campus students, find

it easier to communicate with other students by writing on their wall or sending the

man instant message rather than walking a distance to go speak to them, most

commuters either work after school or have a family to take care of so they don’t

have as much time to devote to establishing social relationships, or even the

possibility that there are commuters who may not know the sites even exist.

There are many reasons someone would start a page on either site. Everyone

has a different intended purpose for what they want to use their page for. Some

people use it as a networking tool, this way they can get in touch with people in an
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area where maybe they want to move to later on in life or even away just to share

common interests. Some people use the social interaction sites, to find out that they

are not all alone in the world, that maybe someone is going through something

similar that they are going through.

Another possible way the site can be used is for dating purposes. Maybe

someone isn’t so good at approaching people in the street or the bars and telling

them how they feel. Using these online tools allow people to connect in many

different ways before deciding to meet face to face. It helps also to know ahead of

time if this is the kind of person you would want to meet up in real life or not. If they

are not you are able to stop talking to them by clicking the block button or even just

deleting them totally out of your friends list.

There are people who use there sites for total business related work. Whether

it be in the music industry, movies or even paintings, it’s a way to get there work

out there into the world. This helps spread the work about their work, and helps

them in the long run when trying to find potential customers. On the flipside

businesses are able to use the sites when deciding whether or not to hire someone,

it’s possible that they may contact you to offer a job.

There are writers out there in the world that just want a place to write there

blogs, and they don’t want to have to pay a single penny to do so. This is another

reason people come to the websites, to publish their work. This gives them the

chance to have people read what they write, and get criticism for it. Some people

feel that by publishing there work online, it will help them become a better writer

because they are able to get feedback on their work. Also they can relate their work

to what people are into reading, once they find out what the audience specifically

wants.
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Not as many people use the sites as a bulletin board but it doesn’t mean it’s

not being done. Some people get their message out by posting it on the bulletin

board. This is done because they know that every user has a bulletin board on their

front page, so their friends are able to read what they are putting on. Once people

start talking it gets the message out into the open, and one person starts

communicating the message to others.

Even though there are a lot of positive things that come out of

communicating via social interacting websites, there are also a lot of negative

consequences that arise as well. Some people don’t use the site as a tool rather

than a way of life, what is meant by this is either they become addicted to the site

so much that they forget how to communicate in real life with family and friends or

they are on the site for a non positive reason. There are people that are able to get

onto the site that don’t have the most positive of intentions. We always hear about

the negative things that happen on Myspace, such as people meeting up with other

people and getting raped or killed, but really it can’t be blamed on the tool, it’s the

people acting in a negative matter on the site that cause the problem to occur.

There are also people who place way to personal information on their page.

This can be bad for many reasons, one being if an employer is trying to contact you

for a job, and they see that you’re under age and drinking them are more than likely

not going to give you the job. Also, it can be bad because you are than opening

yourself up for a chance to be stalked and hurt. If you are going to put personal

information on your page, make sure to set the privacy standards to high, and don’t

accept friend requests from people you don’t know.

Like what was stated briefly before, some people use the online tool way to

often that they actually send break up letters, get into fights with friends and cause
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other sorts of problems in there life. This can be problematic, because you are not

always reading the message the way it was intended to be. Depending on how you

are feeling that day you may look into the message way too much and cause an

argument over nothing. Most people are aware that if you type in all caps like THIS,

it is the same as shouting at people, which can be truly offensive to some people.

There are also many different kinds of glitches that technology can have that

can lead to problems when communicating. The instant messenger on Facebook for

example, it sometimes shows people as offline when really they are online. This can

be very misleading to people, and they may think that someone left without saying

hi or goodbye, which than leads people thinking that someone is mad at them which

may be truly false. Also a lot of the time the sites updating without warning, this

could cause frustration amongst the users and they won’t be in as good as a mood

as they were intending to be. Sometimes, the site will glitch when doing someone’s

age, such as showing someone to be 18 or older when in fact they are only 14.

One last problem that could arise when using the communication tool is the

fact that people can lie about who they are. Since it’s online, there is a chance that

people think its okay to lie about where they are from and what they do for a living

or what their hobbies are because no one will ever know. There isn’t really away to

tell if someone is being truly honest with who they are to you unless they start

going in circles with their information and repeating things but changing their story

all the time.

There is one main reason that College students use the online tools so

frequently. That reason being that, if you were born in the 1990’s you probably

never experienced life without a computer. Many times students have had a

computer in their reach for years, which would be a big reason they are able to use
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it without realizing how frequently it’s being done. The idea of having to actually go

in front of someone is so far retro in time, that it’s pretty much unheard of.

Since some of the information I had found while doing my research was dated

to the year 2001 I wanted to do my own survey to see if I could get the same results

now than that was previously found. Most of the responses were about the same

that were found way back in 2001.

The only real thing that had changed was the fact that there were more men

using the social interacting websites than women. Or at least that is how it looked

with my results. The survey was only taken by 19 students, which is not a sufficient

amount of people to get a good result. Just because the survey showed that there

were more men than women, it may have had other factors such as they were the

only ones to really see the link for the survey.

I had asked three other questions that I found important while doing my

research. The first one asked what tool on the website of their choice they use most

frequently. The reason for this question is because it lets us grasp more of a way

that students are using the websites. The second question that I asked was what

they liked best about the website of their choice, and I asked this because I wanted

to see what gets the attention of the students using the site, and what makes them

keep using it. The last question I chose to ask was what do you like least about your

website of choice. This was asked because many times things go wrong on a

website which causes the user to steer away from using that site Even if it is just a

temporary situation.

The survey that I had conducted is attached to this paper. It shows all the

results to the questions that were asked. As stated previously, there may have been

some malfunctions with this survey. For instance, there was one person who
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answered the survey that wasn’t a college student, he was actually a high school

student and didn’t read the instructions provided before hand. Another situation

that came up was the fact that you could answer a question twice, which led to

some of the data being thrown off.

In conclusion, we have discussed the many reasons why people would use an

online website as a primary way of communication rather than face to face. As well

as mentioning the danger in doing so. To reiterate something that was mentioned

previously, many students have grown up with a computer and internet at their

fingertips. This makes it difficult for students to see the life outside of the internet.

For the most part people know how to live outside of the internet, but there are

some people who fall short of the ability to do so.

Bibliography
Ellison, N. B. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College
Student's Use of Onine Social Network Sites. Retrieved October 17, 2008, from
JCMC: http://jcmc.indian.edu/vo112/issue4/ellison.html

Jackson, L. A. (n.d.). Gender and the Internet: Women Communicating and Men
Searching- Statisticall Data Included. Retrieved October 8, 2008, from findarticles:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_2001_March/ai_78361733
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Smith, R. (2008, March 07). Facebook and Myspace generation 'cannot form
relationships'. Retrieved October 17, 2008, from Telegraph.co.uk:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/digitallife/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/07/03/dlface
book103.xml

Student Facebook, Myspace Use Predicted By Race, Ethnicity, Education. (2007,

November 22). Retrieved October 17, 2008, from ScienceDaily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/reeases/2007/11/071119170137.htm