Some groups of people are more likely to use Facebook than others. When it comes to this social site, those who have walked across the stage for a collegiate graduation are more likely to belong to the network. Specifically, of those who have earned at least one college degree, 74% use Facebook compared to 61% of adults who have obtained a high school diploma or less (Pew Research Center 2019c). When one graduates with a degree, they leave campus with an expanded network that may be sprawled out over a state or country, so social media provides a convenient way to stay connected. Furthermore, there is also a distinction between gender with Facebook users. In the US, three quarters of women use Facebook compared to 63% of men (Pew Research Center 2019c). By analyzing the predictors of social media usage, colleges and universities can identify methods to help their students navigate platforms in ways that will complement academic and professional goals.
By examining the Facebook activity of 13 to 17 year olds, there can be some insight gained on the social networking habits of incoming undergraduates. According to one study, “lower-income teens are more likely than higher-income teens to use Facebook” (Pew Research Center 2018a). A closer look into the data reveals the financial divide. Although many US teenagers often use similar social sites despite a breakdown of further demographics, 70% of teens raised on an annual household income under $30,000 have Facebook accounts compared to 36% of their counterparts living in a home with an annual income over $75,000 (Pew Research Center 2018a). Utilizing data on socioeconomics and social media usage can introduce ways for institutions to connect with audiences, such as first-generation college students, and share knowledge on academic programs and resources available.
Instagram is another popular platform with college-aged adults. Commonly referred to as “IG,” or “The Gram,” this social site is also synonymous with (a) short-lived stories that disappear from the site 24 hours after they are posted and (b) filtered photographs, which allow users to alter their images with graphics and airbrushing. Just under six years after hitting the social media scene, Instagram reached “half a billion monthly active users, 300 million of whom [used] the photo-sharing service daily” (Laurent 2016). Instagram is wildly popular with many athletes, actors, and musicians, which college students have an interest in and frequently follow on social sites. It is not uncommon for celebs to share breaking personal news and exclusive photos on these platforms – capturing the attention of fans. As of 2019, nine years after its release, three quarters of 18 to 24 year olds had an account on Instagram (Pew Research Center 2019b). IG is beginning to eclipse Facebook as a favorite among college students.
Snapchat is a media sharing site that has garnered the attention of college-aged adults as well. Among those aged 18 to 24, 73% have a profile on the platform (Pew Research Center 2019b). Unlike social networks with some features that vanish a day after posting, content shared on Snapchat is designed to disappear immediately after viewing. One study found the fleeting quality of messages on the platform “reduces self-consciousness in communication” for many university students using the app, resulting in unique, humorous, and vulnerable exchanges (Xu et al. 2016, p. 1672). In a virtual world where many posts can live forever through screenshots and sharing, Snapchat offers a veil of privacy due to its short-lived nature. This may be comforting to some college students who worry about their light-hearted, dorm room antics coming back to haunt their professional life down the road.
The method of concise writing, taught during the undergraduate years, may unintentionally help prepare students for Twitter, a microblogging platform. In the US, the typical Twitter user is more likely to belong to a younger age group, hold a degree, and earn higher wages compared to the average adult in the nation. “Overall, 42% of US adult Twitter users have at least a college degree, compared with 31% of all Americans. [Forty-one percent] of adult Twitter users earn at least $75,000 a year, compared with 32% of all American adults” (Pew Research Center 2019d). Twitter originally capped posts at 140 characters before increasing the count to 280 in 2017, about 10 years after its inception (Tsukayama 2017). Twitter users often take to the internet with short messages that voice their views on the hot topic of the day or week, often relating to news, culture, and politics.
YouTube plugged into the digital scene at a time when just 7% of 18 to 29 year olds were using social media; its very first video, “Me at the Zoo,” was uploaded in April of 2005 (Grandoni 2013; Pew Research Center 2019a). With a running time of 18 seconds, the video has racked up millions of views. The college-aged population is using YouTube at higher rates than those of the average adult. Specifically, 90% of 18 to 24 year olds report using YouTube compared to 73% of all adults in 2019 (Pew Research Center 2019e). YouTube allows people to watch public or unlisted videos without creating a profile on the network. In order to post videos, users generating content must create a profile and choose the name of a personalized channel to which content will be added. Those who decide to subscribe to YouTube channels can track content updates. At the start of 2019, YouTube amassed close to 44,000 channels and upwards of 250,000 subscribers (Pew Research Center 2019e). It was forecast that YouTube will have 1.86 billion users by 2021, up from 1.35 billion in 2016 (Statista 2018). There is an emerging trend of using YouTube in higher education. A growing number of online and hybrid college courses use YouTube in various ways. Some educators may upload recorded lectures or link to open-access videos. In addition, students use the site as a place to upload class presentations and share their work remotely.
Many college students identify as gamers and YouTube often draws them to its website. Nearly 18% of videos posted in the English language during the first week of January in 2019 were about gaming; these videos pulled in 34,347 median views compared to 11,174 for recorded content on other subject matters (Pew Research Center 2019e). These videos generally offer tips and tricks that gamers can use to maximize their playing experience. According to one poll, almost three quarters of men aged 18 to 29 play video games along with about half of women in the same age group (Pew Research Center 2018b). Furthermore, these videos tend to be much longer than those in other categories. Specifically, gaming videos from the first week of 2019 alone had a median length of 13 minutes compared to 5.2 minutes for others (Pew Research Center 2019a). Just as students flock to lecture halls to learn about human biology and women’s literature, many absorb information from user-generated content on YouTube.
One of the most recent social media apps to gain the attention of US college students is TikTok. This platform, introduced by the Chinese video-sharing company ByteDance, experienced rocketing popularity in late 2019 with more than 1.5 billion downloads (Chapple 2019). Although the platform is a favorite choice for some pre-teens, many undergrads use the social site to share short videos. Some college students and recent grads use TikTok to earn money for promoting products and services (Kerr 2019). With an ability to monetize driving audiences to social media pages for branding messages, TikTok joins the likes of Instagram, YouTube, and more.
College students spend a great deal of time online and so do others. Surfing the web has become one of America’s popular pastimes with 81% reporting daily use of the internet; more than a quarter of American adults described themselves as continuously online throughout the day, while 45% report pulling up the internet multiple times on a day-to-day basis (Pew Research Center 2019f). With a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a screen, people