••• social media research

Facebookers give a little, get a lot

Most Facebook users receive more from their Facebook friends than they give, according to a study from Washington, D.C., research company Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study combines server logs of Facebook activity with survey data to explore the structure of Facebook friendship networks and measures of social well-being.
On average, Facebook users get more friend requests than they make: 63 percent received at least one friend request during the period studied but only 40 percent made a friend request. It is more common to be Liked than to Like others. The postings, uploads and updates of the sampled Facebook users are Liked more often than these users Like the contributions of others, as users pressed the Like button on friends’ content an average of 14 times per month and received Likes from friends 20 times per month. The Facebook users also sent nine personal messages but received 12. Twelve percent tagged a friend in a photo while 35 percent were themselves tagged in a photo.
“It turns out there are segments of Facebook power users who contribute much more content than the typical user. Most Facebook users are moderately active over a one-month time period so highly-active power users skew the average. Second, these power users constitute about 20-30 percent of Facebook users but the striking thing is that there are different power users depending on the activity in question. One group of power users dominates friending activity. Another dominates Liking activity. And yet another dominates photo tagging,” said Keith Hampton, lead author of the Pew report.
Women are more intense contributors of content on Facebook than are men. The average female user made 21 updates to her Facebook status in the month of observation while the average male made six.
The study found no evidence that length of time using Facebook is associated with a decline in Facebook activity. On the contrary, the more time that has passed since a user started using Facebook, the more frequently s/he makes status updates, uses the Like button, comments on friends’ content and tags friends in photos. Similarly, the more Facebook friends someone has, the more frequently they contribute all forms of Facebook content and the more friend requests they tend to send and accept.

••• consumer research

Stress survey: women suffer, seniors coast

Whether the stressors in a woman’s life are actually greater than those in a man’s will always remain a point of contention but women still perceive themselves to be significantly more stressed than men, according to an online survey of Americans conducted by Polaris Marketing Research Inc., Atlanta.
Over 1,200 respondents were asked to rate themselves on a 10-point stress scale, where 10 was very stressed and 1 was not at all stressed. Women respondents’ mean stress rating was 5.34, compared to male respondents’ mean stress rating of 4.82.
Further, while men were more likely to rate their stress levels about the same as a year ago, women were more likely to say their stress is lower than a year ago.
“Interestingly, we should all be envious of the over-65 crowd, with their significantly lower stress ratings than any other age group,” said Jan Carlson, president of Polaris. “Not only are they less stressed than any other age group, they are more likely to believe their stress levels are unchanged from 12 months ago. Compare that to the under-50s, who rate their stress levels as significantly more stressed but increasing from a year ago.”