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.

facebook - a mirror reflecting yourself?

Facebook has become a necessity and practically everyone in the modern world is on facebook. It isn't a casual move but has become a symbol of being 'cool' and modern. Facebook is no longer a tool for communication but has become a platform where people can portray to the entire world, what they are or what they 'intend' to be.

For example, people having many friends on facebook are thought as being highly social and that they would make a good friend to you and then you add them as well. But who knows whether such people know everyone on their facebook friend list or have they randomly added people to increase their friend list? On the other hand, people who do not have good profile pictures and have less friends on facebook are thought to be reserved and backward. Isn't facebook really deceptive? How can you judge a person by looking at their profiles?

Newspaper reports also mention that too many employers these days stalk their employees on facebook, gather their personal information and fire them from their job the very next day. Click here for the article. This, however, is a bad tool to judge an individual's style of working or behavior because who knows whether or not are you a part of their open profile or their 'limited profile'? Basing judgements on partial truth or many a times on just a 'portrayed image' may deprive the deserving candidate from a good job experience. Too many workers have lost their jobs because of such stalking being done by employees.

People should remember that one should not judge a book by its cover as what may seem to be the truth may not actually be the truth. Befriending random people by looking at there attractive profiles can prove to be extremely unsafe since such people are very quick at hacking passwards and messing up with your profile. An attractive profile, good pictures and certainly many mutual friends are not a guarantee of you knowing that person. Its better to be non judgemental than juding people through such social networking sites, both for personal and professional use.