The study Antecedents and Consequences of Online Social Networking Behavior, published by Adam Acar, was an interesting experiment used to identify different aspects of social networking and to compare online social networks to normal social networks. Because of the lack of academic writing on this subject, Acar has virtually no evidence to compare his findings too. In his experiment he hypothesized that people with lower self esteem have fewer social contacts, people with poor body image have fewer contacts, and other conjectures regarding anxiety as well as extroversion/introversion. I found his hypotheses were very logical and rational and if found to be true would offer very important information about social networking.
To find his results, Acar used a survery based experiment with about 400 students. 94% of those students had a facebook profile and another 29% had a myspace account. In his results he found that online social networks are significantly larger than ones offline. He also found that social network sites have no substantial effect on anxiety levels or body image. One aspect of the survey I found very interesting was differences based on gender. While women are often though to be much more selective of whom they let in their network, woman have much higher friend acceptance rates and are "poked" much more often than men. I also found it interesting that people with more strangers in their network are found to have lower self esteem. Initially it would seem that people with more strangers are more extroverted and have higher self esteem, however it also says to me that people who have lower self esteem are desperate for more contacts and thus have more strangers in their network.
Hello AG! Great post about this article! I like your detailed explanation and summary about the article. It was very simple to read and easy to understand. I also found the fact that even though females tend to be more selective they accept more friend requests. I have noticed that with my Facebook as well as my other friend's facebook's. With Acar's hypotheses I disagreed at first. For some reason, I had the notion in my head that people with lower self-esteems and/introverts would have bigger social networks because it is something they can either hide themselves behind or make themselves be whoever they want.
ReplyDeleteHi AG, this post is well said. You really hit on your points you made and I see your stance on the article and Acar's studies. I agree with you on how interesting the fact that women have a much higher acceptance rate then males. I feel like Acar hit on a lot of key points with his various studies and surveys. I also would've thought that extroverts would have less people in their networks then introverts. Especially after the way Acar explained how anxiety levels aren't as high within people while using online social networks.
ReplyDeleteAG,
ReplyDeleteI found this study to be very interesting. Like Acar, I figured people with low self esteem and poor body image would have fewer friends on their social network site. It’s reassuring to hear that social networking sites have no effect on people with low self esteem or poor body language. It’s funny that women have a higher friend acceptance rating then men. I use to accept almost everyone that asked me, but now I’ve become cautious on whom I accept as a friend. I would agree with you that even though people with low self esteem have a lot more strangers than others, it says that they are more whiling to accept anyone who asks them.