Gender Differences in the Use of Facebook

After reading the entry called Gender Differences in the Use of Facebook, I felt like i really learned a lot about some of the facts that deal with how people use communication on the social network. I thought it was very interesting how the statistics showed the differences between genders and the differences in their uses on the Facebook website. For example, it showed that female students are more likely to post more photos of themselves and with friends, and more likely to comment on their friend's facebook's photos and statuses, including using the "like" button. I was also surprised to see that the statistics showed that men are more likely to post news events and current event related topic than women, because on my personal experiences on Facebook, i've seen an equal number of men AND women posting news and articles related to current events on their Facebook pages. I think that women stay just as involved as men in news and current events, but they just might not choose to post or share it with their friends on Facebook. I also thought that the entry on sharing personal information was interesting too. According to the statistics, men and women are likely to share more of certain personal information. For example, it said that women are more likely to share what their relationship status is and men are more likely to share their religious or political views. Grad students seem to not stay as involved with Facebook activity as much as high school or college students, and i think it is because grad students take their careers and other affairs outside of the social network more seriously. Grad students also do not seem to worry as much about the number of friends they have on their Facebook as much as students, and I personally find the whole hype about having as much friends on Facebook to be quite ridiculous, because I doubt that the people who have over 1100 friends on their friends list really talk to every single one of those people on a daily basis, or keep in touch with their lives. I think that so many people have the assumption that having so many friends like 100+ may show they are "popular" but really i do not think that has anything to do with it, because what is important is how much you really know all the people on your friends list and how often you keep in touch with them. Today so many people are just "adding" or "friending" anybody, or people who they have only met once, or someone who is just a friend of a mutual friend.
While this entry was a very interesting and useful source to me, it got me thinking that we really need to see how social networking has shaped and influence our communication and socializing with the people in our lives. It's also interesting to see how the differences between genders shape how we communicate and share our information about our lives with others. Social networking can be good and bad, depending on how serious we take it, and how much it has progressed into our lives.