New Facebook Facts

The world’s most popular social media network, Facebook, celebrated its tenth birthday on February 4^th 2014. The social media platform is used by 57% of all Americans over 18. In addition, according to statistics from Pew Research, the number of user’s who access the platform on a daily basis has increased since 2010. In 2010, the figure stood at 51% of all users, by 2014 64% of Facebook users were found to access the platform on a daily basis.

A recent study from Pew Research revealed a number of interesting new Facebook facts about the platform and its users.  These are as follows:

1. New Facebook Facts: A number of users dislike certain aspects of the platform

36% of those interviewed in the study were found to dislike friends on the platform who shared too much of a user’s personal information, such as a picture, without gaining their consent first. The dislike was magnified when it came to parents. 57% of users interviewed with children aged under 18 said they disliked people posting pictures of their children on the platform without first gaining consent. 36% of those interviewed said they disliked it when friends shared too much information about themselves on the platform.

A very small number of users surveyed were found to be scared of missing out on social activities. 5% of those surveyed said they “strongly disliked” Facebook showing friends enjoying social activities which they had not been invited to take part in. An overwhelming 84% said they were not bothered by this.

2. New Facebook Facts: Half of Facebook’s older users have friends lists of 200 or more users

There were found to be large differences in the number of friends older users had. It was found that 39% had between 1 and 100 friends, whilst 15% of those surveyed had over 500 friends. Unsurprisingly perhaps, younger users were found to have far more friends on the platform. 27% of those aged between 18 and 29 were found to have over 500 friends. Old people, perhaps unsurprisingly also, were found to have significantly less friends on the platform. It was found that 72% of users aged over 65 had 100 or less friends on the platform.

3. New Facebook Facts: Users tend to like friends posts and comment on their pictures regularly but do not post updates that often

The Pew Research Study asked users about the frequency they perform certain actions on the platform. The research revealed that a large number of users regularly liked comments and updates made by friends, whilst they would rarely update their own status. The results reveal that 44% of the Facebook users surveyed like content which has been posted by a friend once a day. However only 10% of these same users said they updated their status on a daily basis. A quarter of those surveyed, 25%, said that they never update their Facebook status.

4. New Facebook Facts: Men and women use Facebook differently but also similarly

This fact may not be new in of itself but the results obtained by the survey provide greater insight on how differently. Women were found to be more likely to use Facebook to view photos and videos. 54% of the women surveyed cited this reason, whilst only 39% of men did. Women were also more likely to use the platform as a means of gaining support from their network, 29% compared with 16% of men.

The statistics also revealed a number of reasons for using the platform where men and women scored equally. These are, receiving comments updates (39%), keeping up with news and current events (31%) and getting feedback on content they had posted, (here there was a percentage difference, 16% of men cited this reason, 17% of women did.)