respondents were more likely to have a profile (86% of <17 and 87% of 18-25 year olds), while around half of the respondents aged 26-36 have a profile and only 27% of those aged 36 and over have created an online profile. Type and number of profiles Facebook was clearly the most popular website for this sample (49%), MySpace came in second with 29% of respondents using this platform and the remainder distributed amongst other well-known sites (for example, LinkedIn and Hi5). Almost 50% of respondents reported that they had actively maintained an online profile for over one year. The vast majority (75%) has just one active profile, while 22% acknowledge that they have two active profiles and only 3% of respondents had three or more active profiles. Profile Purpose The two primary reasons respondents identified for originally creating their online profile were, an invitation from others (40%) or a desire to stay in contact with family and friends (29%). Fewer respondents indicated that they had originally created a profile to actively get in contact with others (as opposed to staying in contact) (9%), out of general curiosity (9%), promote themselves or an event/issue (4%), to expand social networks (3%) or business networks (2%) networks, or ‘other’ unstated reasons (4%). Privacy With respect to privacy, the majority (68%) indicated that they created an online profile to be viewed only by people already known to them. Only 16% have part of their profile available to be viewed by anyone and 16% have their entire profile openly accessible to anyone. Further analysis of this data revealed that male respondents and those aged over 36 years had a greater tendency to have their profile publicly available. ‘Friends’ As would be predicted, younger respondents have a greater number of online ‘friends’ than their older counterparts. As outlined in Table 2 below, 84% of under 17s and 73% of 18-25s have more than 50 friends. In contrast, less than 20% of 26-35 year olds and 8% of 36+ have greater than 50 online ‘friends’ Also of interest is the amount of time being invested in OSN activities. As outlined in Table 5 (over page) the majority of respondents are spending under one hour per week on their own profile (and certainly less than five hours per week) and also less than five hours per week on the profiles of their friends. Overall 98% of respondents report spending less than five hours on their own profile and 95% devote less than five hours per week to their friends’ profiles. This data was further Young: Identity Creation and Online Social Networking ©International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society 2009 47 http://www.swin.edu.au/ijets
analysed in relation to ‘number of friends’ and ‘time spent online’. This analysis revealed that
number of online friends is not a predictor of time spent on one’s own profile. For instance,
respondents with 50-100 friends were identified as spending more time per week on their
own profile than those people who reported having over 200+ friends.
No respondent reported updating their profile picture on a daily basis but, 14% do so weekly,
47% do so monthly, 14% do so yearly, while 23% never make changes to their online profile
picture. More interesting were the respondents’ qualitative responses about their choice of
online picture
In addition to posting an online profile picture another area where the individual has control
over is his/her image is updating of status/feelings. Survey data revealed that 40% of
respondents make use of this feature. There was no discernable difference between gender
or age in making status updates.
Feelings toward online social networking
When asked what may contribute to OSN being viewed negatively it was found that
respondents felt quite strongly about receiving negative messages/actions and being
ignored. Over half of respondents also found the amount of time they were spending online
to communicate to be an issue. Table 9 below presents the items in order of most
detrimental to those which have less negative effect on the feelings of the online social
network user.
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