Status Blog

My research so far has yielded some interesting results.  I have 38 responses to my survey, and most of them are fairly varied.  All of my participants have been over the age of 18, with most of them in the 22-25 year old range (25 of the 28 participants). There were almost double the number of female participants as male, and most of my participants lived in Virginia, but there were responses from several east coast states.  All but one of the survey participants stated that they used writing in a social capacity, and most of them indicated that they also used it in a casual work capacity as well.  Almost all survey takers indicated that writing was at least somewhat important to them, and fewer but still most of the participants indicated that Facebook was at least somewhat important to them.

There was a huge range in the number of Facebook friends each participant had, with the median falling around 459 friends.  The high number was 1800 and the low was 0, so I'm not sure if that 0 person just didn't have a Facebook or had one but had no friends added.  Most of the survey participants have had a Facebook account for more than four years, and none of them have had one for less than one year.  One of the questions with the most even distribution of answers was Question 9, which asked how much time each participant spent on Facebook per day.  Most people answered that they spent more than 20 minutes per day on Facebook, with the most falling between 20-50 minutes per day.

After the general demographic and usage statistic questions, I posed questions asking about how Facebook affected daily life for participants.  The first asked about the effect of Facebook on work habits, and most people answered that it hadn't positively or negatively affected them.  A few of the responses indicated that Facebook was indeed distracting, but if they didn't have it, they would have just found other distractions.  Some answered that Facebook was blocked on their work computers, and some indicated that they just checked it on breaks and that it wasn't detrimental to their ability to concentrate.  Of course, some also indicated that it was distracting and that they got less work done.

A much larger group of people indicated that Facebook was a big distraction from schoolwork, but this question also didn't apply to some of the survey takers who weren't in school, so there was a smaller audience.  As far as Facebook's effect on social life, most people (25 survey takers) agreed that it had a positive one.  Several people indicated that it was useful for keeping in touch with people you probably wouldn't see often otherwise, especially in the case of military relocations. 6 people indicated that it had negatively affected their social lives, mostly because they made less of an effort to see people offline.  One of the more interesting sets of answers came from the question about how Facebook affected writing ability.  Most people indicated that either it didn't affect their writing ability at all, or that it positively affected them because it's a public forum and they didn't want to be judged for poor grammar and spelling in front of all their friends.

One question asked whether or not people considered Facebook interactions to be writing.  This set of answers turned out fairly close, with 55% of people voting yes and 45% voting no.  Some people responded that it was a form of communication, but that they didn't consider it writing except in the cases of people who posted poetry and other forms of creative writing.  The last question asked how the participant feels about Facebook, and by far the most popular answer was "I like it but I don't need it."

Based on my research so far, I've learned that much of the hype about Facebook negatively affecting writing ability has been disproved,  if the opinions of the subjects are to be believed.  Most people who have taken my survey believe that Facebook has made them better writers because they don't want to look stupid in front of their friends, which is something I haven't seen in any journal article yet.  I'm going to attempt to gain a wider audience of survey takers in the next few weeks to give me a better research sample, and I think I'm aiming for 50 participants at this point.