Adolescents' and emerging adults' social networking online: Homophily or diversity?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2011.03.001Get rights and content

Abstract

More than half of all online American adolescents and emerging adults have created personal profiles for social networking on the Internet. Does homophily in their offline friendships extend online? Drawing mainly on research of face-to-face friendship, we collected data from the public spaces, called “walls”, of 129 young Americans ages 16 to 19 with active MySpace profiles to test several hypotheses concerning number of online social interactions and whether characteristics of online “friends” are similar to or different from characteristics of young social networkers. Number of listed friends and comments ranged widely. Most interactions were with females and with persons of the same ethnicity, age, and state, although ethnic differences and diversity were sometimes indicated. Adolescents showed greater age homophily than emerging adults, and females received a greater proportion of comments than males from same-gender friends. Possible implications of the slight majority of interactions with similar others are discussed.

Research highlights

► We collected data from 129 Americans ages 16 to 19 with active MySpace profiles. ► We tested hypotheses about online interactions and characteristics of online friends. ► Number of listed friends and comments range widely. ► Most interactions are with females and persons of the same ethnicity, age, and state. ► Adolescents showed greater age homophily than emerging adults.

Section snippets

Status homophily in close friendship and peer networks

Theories of friendship and face-to-face social networks typically identify status homophily – the tendency to form friendships and maintain contact with similar others in terms of major sociodemographic dimensions such as race, age, and gender – as a major organizing characteristic of close friendships and larger peer networks, such as cliques and crowds (McPherson et al., 2001, Nangle et al., 2004, Quillian and Campbell, 2003). Social psychologists typically explain that people prefer

Ethnic, racial, and gender homophily in structuring social networks

Among the status domains that play a large part in structuring social networks in the United States and other ethnically diverse societies are ethnicity and race. Ethnic homophily appears in friendship networks at least as early as the elementary school grades (Lee et al., 2007, Shrum et al., 1988) and continues through middle school and high school (Goodreau et al., 2009, Joyner and Kao, 2000), college (Marmaros & Sacerdote, 2006), and graduate school (Mollica, Gray, & Trevino, 2003). Even in

Age homophily in social networks

The degree of age homophily in social networks appears to vary. The fact that American schools group ages together into classrooms induces strong offline homophily, although this tendency declines as students move from elementary through the high school grades (Goodreau et al., 2009, McPherson et al., 2001). Most of the online relationships reported by the 10- to 17-year-old participants surveyed by Wolak et al. (2002) were within one year of age. However, it is difficult to distinguish

Geographic homophily

As mentioned above, social networks allow members to link or friend with permission persons they do not personally know. Before the launching of MySpace and similar websites, Wolak et al. (2002) found that most adolescents' online relationships overlapped with their face-to-face social ones and that young men and young women were equally likely to converse online with people they did not know in person. However, more recently Lenhart and Madden (2007) learned that 12–17-year old females were

Procedure

From mid-January to mid-April 2007, 3 undergraduate research assistants individually and randomly retrieved 129 recently updated public profiles, defined as updated within the previous 24 h, of 16 to 19-year-olds on the social networking site MySpace. Assistants located recently updated profiles by using the site's “basic browse” feature and choosing profiles with the following criteria: 1) both male and female, 2) ages 16 to 19, 3) all marital statuses, 4) located within the United States, and

Results

We conducted statistical analyses using analysis of variance due to the continuous dependent variables and the 3 categorical independent variables of gender, age (adolescents ages 16–17 years compared to emerging adults 18–19 years), and ethnicity (Anglo American, Hispanic American, African American, Asian American, and unstated).

Discussion

Our results suggest that similar to offline friendship interactions, the majority of online wall interactions of adolescents and emerging adults are cross-gender and with peers of the same ethnicity, age, and state; female social networkers, however, receive a greater proportion of comments from same-gender friends than do males. Yet, many of these percentages hovered only slightly above 50%, suggesting greater diversity in online friendships than might be immediately apparent. The public yet

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Penn State Research Development Grant. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Adolescence, Chicago, IL, March 2008 and of the Pennsylvania Psychological Association, Harrisburg, PA, June 2007.

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