Age differences in online social networking
Date Issued
2008
Author(s)
DOI
10.1145/1358628.1358754
Abstract
This study presents an analysis of age-related
differences of user behavior in the social network site
MySpace.com. We focus on two age groups: older
people (60+ years of age) and teenagers (between 13
and 19 years of age). We used locally developed web
crawlers to collect large sets of data from MySpace’s
user profile pages. We used different analytic
techniques to quantify any differences that exist in the
networks of MySpace friends of older people and
teenagers. Content analysis was applied to investigate
age-related differences concerning the way users
represent themselves on their profile pages. Our
findings show that teenagers tend to have much larger
networks of friends compared to older users. Also, we
found that the majority of teenage users’ MySpace
friends are in their own age range (age +/- 2 years),
whilst older people’s friends tend to have a more
diverse age distribution.
differences of user behavior in the social network site
MySpace.com. We focus on two age groups: older
people (60+ years of age) and teenagers (between 13
and 19 years of age). We used locally developed web
crawlers to collect large sets of data from MySpace’s
user profile pages. We used different analytic
techniques to quantify any differences that exist in the
networks of MySpace friends of older people and
teenagers. Content analysis was applied to investigate
age-related differences concerning the way users
represent themselves on their profile pages. Our
findings show that teenagers tend to have much larger
networks of friends compared to older users. Also, we
found that the majority of teenage users’ MySpace
friends are in their own age range (age +/- 2 years),
whilst older people’s friends tend to have a more
diverse age distribution.
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