Facebook Still No. 1 Among College Students

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 12/11/08
Facebook remains the number one Web site this year among college students, according to a survey by Anderson Analytics, which has tracked US college students' attitudes and behaviors since 2005. Besides ranking the most popular Web sites, this year's study took a closer look at students' use of social media including blogging, discussion boards, and social network services (SNS) such as Facebook, Myspace, and professional networking site LinkedIn.

Facebook overtook MySpace in 2007. Myspace has continued to drop and is currently in fourth place after Google and Yahoo which both have offered additional services that students reported they appreciate. Three new sites this year among the top 10 Web sites are LiveJournal, Amazon, and CNN.

LiveJournal which is now in 6th place after YouTube is new on the list and is indicative of how blogging is catching on among students. The popularity of blogging is being largely driven by college women, who are three times more likely than their male counterparts to maintain a blog.

"We were surprised to see how blogging has gained in popularity among college students," said Tom Anderson, founder and managing partner of the research firm. "From our other research we know that among online adults, only about 13 percent read blogs and three percent have their own blog. Students are four times more likely to blog, which means blogging will continue to be a relevant and popular new media."

Students are heavy users of social networks, however. Facebook is by far more popular both overall and in terms of frequency of use. Eighty percent of students use Facebook compared to 40 percent for MySpace. Facebook is also used more often with 74 percent of students accessing the site at least once a week. Interestingly, LinkedIn, which has a much older member base, is also starting to catch on among a tenth of students.

The GenX2Z College Study is conducted every year in the fall semester among 1,000 US college students.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • computer with a red warning icon on its screen, surrounded by digital grids, glowing neural network patterns, and a holographic brain

    Report Highlights Security Risks of Open Source AI

    In these days of rampant ransomware and other cybersecurity exploits, security is paramount to both proprietary and open source AI approaches — and here the open source movement might be susceptible to some inherent drawbacks, such as use of possibly insecure code from unknown sources.

  • Two shadowy figures sit at computers with glowing screens, surrounded by floating digital codes in a dark, high-tech environment

    Reports Note Increasing Threat of Nation-State-Sponsored Cyber Attacks

    A bevy of new cybersecurity reports point to the continuing problem of nation-state-sponsored threat actors. The primary culprits have long been Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, which all show up in recently published reports from Microsoft, IBM, Tenable, and Fortinet.

  • man working on laptop outdoors

    Digital Leadership Must-Haves for 2025: A CDO's Picks

    Now that he's more than a year and a half into his chief digital officer role at NJIT, we've asked Ed Wozencroft to reflect on his areas of concentration: What work must digital leaders "own" in 2025?

  • interconnected cubes and circles arranged in a grid-like structure

    Hugging Face Gradio 5 Offers AI-Powered App Creation and Enhanced Security

    Hugging Face has released version 5 of its Gradio open source platform for building machine learning (ML) applications. The update introduces a suite of features focused on expanding access to AI, including a novel AI-powered app creation tool, enhanced web development capabilities, and bolstered security measures.