The Facebook Generational Divide

Today’s post on the Inside Facebook blog got me thinking about how Facebook users’ behaviors vary based on what age demographic they fall into. It’s no surprise that the numbers reflect that typical Facebook users don’t interact with a large percentage of their friends directly (only about 5-10%). And it’s not surprising because the static “yearbook” nature of Facebook when it was initially released made its real benefit the ability to peek into the lives of your friends (or broadcast our own spectacles out to the world), without anyone ever having to directly interact. This dynamic was something we often discussed in my Promotions class at UVA—a coexistence of exhibitionism and voyeurism that made Facebook a phenomenon. Now that Facebook has integrated tools for real-time communication such as Chat and Newsfeeds, it is still unlikely for users to break out of their initial habits of indirect communication. At least, some segments of users…

Having been part of the Facebook “Test Generation,” I remember people buzzing around my dorm my 1st year in college discussing how cool Facebook was, and how you could suddenly keep track of what all your high school friends were up to in their transition to college life. This was back in the days when you still had to belong to a college network in order to join Facebook, and only a handful of schools were even allowed access. We occasionally posted on others’ walls, a “Happy Birthday!” or “Hope we can catch up at Thanksgiving!,” but beyond that, there was little by way of direct communication. Still, I find that my peers will comment on others’ pictures, status, Wall, etc… usually to post an inside joke or passing thought, but seldom do we carry out full-on conversations in this manner. If you’re “really friends,” you’ll just pick up the phone and call them (or maybe send a text… which is obviously SO MUCH more direct than Facebook ).

This phase in Facebook history quickly ended though when the company finally allowed high schools to have their own networks. Then came the onslaught of my younger sister’s generation. They used the tool in a completely different manner. Within hours, high schoolers had added every application to their profiles that they could fit. They would comment on photos and Walls in real time with one another, often leaving messages like “brb… I have to go eat dinner,” or “ugh, my mom wants me to do my homework now.” It baffled me that they would broadcast private conversations with one another for everyone to see. How unnatural is it to have everybody you know listening in on what you’re talking about with your best friend? It would be my guess that because of this later introduction to Facebook, how these users continue to use Facebook today is with a much higher level of direct communication and with a larger percentage of their total friends.

But then take for comparison my parents’ generation. One by one in the past year or two they’ve all joined Facebook, interested to see what it’s all about (or usually just to spy on their kids). They hesitate to jump right in though because they’ve been raised to keep certain things private. What you share with your business colleagues is completely different than what you would share with your old college roommate, so how does one craft a Facebook page that can appeal to both? It’s a problem I’ve discussed with many of my Baby Boomer acquaintances. At first, many would limit personal information to a minimum, and hope that their children would unknowingly accept their friend request so the real reason they joined Facebook was satisfied (this was usually met with a prompt friend decline from the child). But now, the behavior has changed significantly… maybe because they’ve been watching how their high-school kids use Facebook. I began getting more and more application invitations from friends of my parents and noticed that they’d update their status several times a day. They rejoiced whenever they found an old friend and would always leave comments on each other’s wall such as, “Can you believe after all these years we reconnect on Facebook of all places!” While they reveled in the opportunity to make up for lost time, many still hesitated to share the kind of content that gets people talking. Why would I post up pictures of my family for the world to see? That’s just creepy. So my educated guess would be that these users are not as averse to direct communication, but many of their friends either still aren’t on Facebook to communicate with, or they don’t really have anything worth talking about on their page besides an occasional status update. While they interact directly with several of their friends, the scope of their network is much smaller than younger generations.

Of course, these observations come from within my personal sphere of experience and exclude a large portion of the overall Facebook population.

What would you say your experiences are with Facebook use as it relates to age? I’m interested to hear how others’ observations confirm or deny my postulations.

And another topic, which I’ll probably attack in another post for sake of length, is what implications do these varying behaviors have for social media marketers?

TAGS: Facebook, age, generational divide, Inside Facebook, BoldMouth, social network, social media, Katie Hollar, UVA, high school, college, Baby Boomers

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