Unfriending and Unfollowing Practices of College Student Users of Facebook
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Hinkes, Eliza
- Affiliation: School of Information and Library Science
- Abstract
- Facebook has become an integral part of college students’ lives within the United States. This study aims to provide information on how college students feel and react to information overload, information avoidance, and their privacy concerns. It also aims to find any gender differences between men and women regarding how they unfriend and unfollow other users on Facebook and what their reasoning is. The findings suggest that college students do feel a sense of information avoidance on Facebook that leads them to unfriend or unfollow offending users. Some mentioned feelings of information overload, but it was not a concern that worried them. Many of the participants mentioned that privacy concerns were important to them, but they would rather censor themselves than unfriend or unfollow users that they did not want to see their postings. Generally, the participants held negative attitudes towards Facebook, but felt obligated to keep using the social media site for convenience and to find out information about others. There were no clear differences between men and women in their unfriending and unfollowing practices.
- Date of publication
- spring 2015
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: Dunlevie Honors Undergraduate Research Fund
- Advisor
- Tufekci, Zeynep
- Degree
- Bachelor of Science
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 125
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