COM Professor Mina Tsay-Vogel Sheds Light on Undergrad Facebook Habits

The hours young adults spend on social media networks every day influence their behavior and attitudes about privacy. Heavy social network users who read friends’ updates and share information about themselves become acclimated to the act of posting their information as they read daily about their friends and the world, spurring them to post more themselves—and to share more during off-line encounters.

This effect of social media is one of the big takeaways of a new study of undergraduate-aged Facebook users coauthored by Mina Tsay-Vogel, a College of Communication assistant professor of mass communications and codirector of BU’s Communication Research Center.

“People sometimes don’t realize the powerful socializing role of social media,” says Tsay-Vogel. “Yes, we are maintaining relationships with others, and we might all get to know the most current news and what people are doing, and it’s very satiating. But we might not realize that it’s also affecting how we’re seeing information disclosure in the real world, and how it’s also impacting us to then disclose our own personal information. Not only in the virtual world, but in the off-line world.”

Read more research from the Communication Research Center.