After I started using Facebook in education, I wondered why girls use Facebook (FB) more than boys? Is this a coincidence or is it that girls are better at using social media? I also wondered about the age group that most frequently use social media?
An American study shows the use of the internet
I start with the last question. After searching the internet I have come across several surveys. One of these studies is conducted by kunsulentguiden, it is remarkable that social media is mostly used by "middle-aged" people, users who are between 34 and 44 years old. 25% of those using social media in this age group. In comparison, only 3% are 65 years or older. I had thought that social media was dominated by young people as they often are perceived as technical talented, and grew up with various gadgets. It is surprising that no social networking has the age group below 25 years as its largest group.
The girls the new media pioneers
According to several Norwegian reports it is girls who use social media the most. The girls accompanied the studies first to make use of social and mobile services. The reason that it is pointed out, is that girls create relationships by talking with each other, while boys create relationships by doing things together. The same seems to apply to women and men
The differences become even greater if we look at who blogs most of girls and boys. Here, studies show that there are over twice as many girls as boys that blogs. The girls are sending more SMS than boys. Girls also uploads and downloads more images than boys do. This means that girls are better than boys in creating content on internett. Girls use of social media is more powerful than VG, Dagbladet and Google together according vergil.no
Are the boys all left behind?
Not quite. Boys uses social media but to a lesser degree, and not as regularly as girls. If you include Youtube in view it is referred boys who use Youtube most. Boys seem to spend more time on computer games than girls. Almost twice as much time as girls. Although computer games do not belong under the category of social media, new technologies, games and social media will be more closely connected with each other in the future. Maybe this will make the boys want to use social media more than they do today? From what I've found on the internet, it is perhaps not surprising that boys do not use FB in educations purpose as often as girls. Do I need to post links to games for the boys to use FB? Is there a solution to this? What do you mean?
Some computer games have for a while had elements of social media. Some years ago I had a teenager living in my basement and he played counterstrike. (CS) It's a game where several players are a military unit and they fight against other units. To be able to do this they had to be interactive with each other and talk. They had to know about each other strong and weak spots regarding to the game. They also had discussions about tactics and so on. The game brought them together and they used it in many ways for other purposes too, like chat, talking to each other (no phonebill) etc.
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