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Exploring Age Differences in Online Social Networking: A Study of MySpace User Behavior

This study examines the differences and similarities between older adults and teenagers using MySpace. We focused on age-related variations in the number of friends and how users represent themselves online. Through the development of automated web crawlers, we analyzed profiles of 50 teenage and 50 older users, utilizing the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool for a quantitative assessment. Our findings reveal that teenagers typically have larger friend networks but display more self-references and emotional language compared to older users, who favor broader age-related interactions and employ more formal vocabulary.

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Exploring Age Differences in Online Social Networking: A Study of MySpace User Behavior

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  1. Age Differences in Online Social Networking Rajiv Arjan Center for HCI Design Ulrike Pfeil Center for HCI DesignPanayiotis Zaphiris Center for HCI DesignCHI 2008 2008/06/30

  2. Outline • Introduction • Methods • Discussion • Conclusion

  3. Introduction • This study investigates the differences and similarities of old people and teenagers participating in MySpace.com.

  4. Introduction(Cont.) • In particular, we are interesting in: • Any age-related differences in the number of MySpace friends users have. • Analyzing any age-related differences in the way people represent themselves on MySpace.

  5. Methods • Development of automated web crawlers:We collected random profile IDs of 50 teenage users and 50 older users. • Content Analysis:We then conducted a content analysis on the “About Me”.

  6. Methods(cont.) • The actual quantitative analysis was done using the “LIWC”(Linguistic Inquiry Word Count) tool. • LIWC is a contextual analysis tool which calculates the degree to which people use different categories of words.

  7. Methods(cont.) • Self reference • Social words • Positive emotion words • Negative emotion words • Overall cognitive words • Articles • Big words

  8. Discussion • Age-related differences of friend network:

  9. Discussion(cont.) • The results indicate that teenagers most have friends age 16-18 and the mean number of friends is 95. • Old people tend to have friends from various age groups.The total number of friends we found that older people have on average 18 friends.

  10. Discussion(cont.) • Age-related differences in the self-representation:

  11. Discussion(cont.) • The results indicated that teenagers use more self references, negative emotions, and cognitive words. • Older people use more articles and big words than teenagers.

  12. Conclusion • We identified significant differences between the friend networks of teenagers and older users. • We also identified age-related differences in the way people verbally present themselves online.

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