Gender Differences On Facebook Profiles

In class we've been talking about privacy (or lack of) and gender differences online, so I thought it might be interesting to take an overview of 60 of my "closest" friends on Facebook, 30 guys and 30 girls. Before researching, I figured that girls would share more information online in general, while guys would dominate a few topics to share, namely the "looking for," and "political views" sections. To get a gauge of the differences on Facebook, I looked to see if the profile included just the basic info, gender, current city, hometown, birthday, interested in, looking for, political views, religious views, biography, and relationship status. I didn't note any differences in seriousness of responses, just whether there was a response. Even a joke answer in this case, tells you a bit about the person, so I considered it information sharing still.

In looking at the data results, there are very minimal differences in information sharing on Facebook between males and females. There was no difference between the genders when displaying “interested in” information on their profiles. It was a fairly even split down the middle whether someone included it or not. Males were more inclined to include political and religious views on their profiles, which can be seen as seemingly contentious issues. Perhaps they are more willing to assert their opinions, while females want to avoid any possible confrontations. Females as a whole are more inclined to social cohesion, and posting a contentious point that could outcast them would not fit with this model.

About 2/3 of the males and females surveyed posted their relationship status, so again there is no real difference between the genders. This lack of differentiation seems to be consistent over the rest of the data as well. People as a whole seem to form their identities online through sharing information in the same manner despite their gender. The slight variation in posting of contentious information does seem to note the gender split, but even it was a close call on differentiation. The evening out of genders and personal information sharing habits online should be considered further.