An Investigation of Young Adults' Facebook Use

Abstract

Young adults as emerging adults are required to accomplish an essential developmental task of establishing and maintaining intimate relationships with others. Nowadays, parallel to the rapid changes in society and technology, young adults use the Internet mainly as a communication tool to fulfill this developmental task. Especially, Facebook network service has become an indispensable means of communication and social interaction among young adults. This study aimed at determining the pattern of Facebook use behaviors of young adults. In line with this purpose, the duration of young adults' weekly Internet usage, their average weekly usage of Facebook and the number of friends attached in Facebook personal profile were investigated. Moreover, the study also examined what is shared mostly about the self while using Facebook, the primary purposes of using the Facebook networking service and the viewpoints about Facebook use. The present study was carried out with 111 young adults attending undergraduate programs at Anadolu University. The research data were collected by means of a questionnaire made up of open-ended questions. For the analysis, descriptive statistics and content analysis were employed.