Outrageous Facebook habits of young women or outrageous sexist reporting by Mashable?

Yesterday Mashable posted the results of a survey claiming, in short, that women are addicted to Facebook.

The study, released by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research, uncovered numerous interesting facts that seemed to have shocked and surprised people. The issue has also been discussed like mad across the web.

What seems to have caused the biggest gasp is the fact that as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook the moment they wake up. Yes, even before they go to the bathroom.

‘Blimey’ I can hear you saying, but as a 24-year-old woman this barely makes me raise an eyebrow. In fact, I did the exact same thing this morning!

The survey unearthed some other interesting statistics about women and their use of Facebook:

21% of women aged 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night. Tick, I do this when I can’t sleep .

63% use Facebook as a networking tool. Cross, networking is not something I do full stop. But this has got me thinking, maybe I should start using Facebook to build up some useful contacts.

42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated. Erm, what other pictures are there?

79% are fine with kissing in photos. I wish.

58% use Facebook to keep tabs on ‘frenemies’. Tick, well, frenemies or ex-boyfriends.

50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers. What? Where did this one even come from? Are you mad?

The biggest problem with this Mashable article, or the author’s opinions, is his idea that:

“It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. Combined, it can lead to a privacy mess.”

I disagree. It’s not a privacy problem, and it only becomes one when your nosey boss decides to have a look. If they don’t want to see what’s on there, they should look at your LinkedIn profile instead. And it’s not like we are at risk from paedophiles, so what is this big need to be so private?

As Anna Leach amusingly puts it on her post for ShinyShiny:

“No one asked your boss to go looking at your Facebook profile anyway, & what the hell did he expect to find? photographs of you poring over spreadsheets and motivational business books with your friends in your spare time?”

Of course people do have the option of making part or all of their profile private, but why should they have to? As much as people, particularly the older generation, don’t like to admit, most of us don’t care about privacy. We like people being able to find us, or to share photos of friends and being able to look at people from school and vice versa. So why should they care?

another girl headed to addiction

What has been most surprising about the Mashable post is that it focusses entirely on the survey results about women. We are told that ‘the study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits.’ That’s ‘adults’, so it’s not just women.

What about the statistics on men? The results show that 20% of men use Facebook as a way to ‘hook up’ with people (only 6% of women do this). 24% of men, compared to 9% of women, have broken up with someone via Facebook, and 65% of men are OK with dating people they’ve met online.

Don’t men put pictures of themselves drunk online? Oh they do, it’s just that society (or this hack writing for mashable) still seems to think it is unacceptable to see women drunk. Surely if we continue to publish articles like this which focus on women, this backward attitude will continue?

What this survey really shows is that the things women do online, however ‘shocking’ people believe them to be, only affect themselves. They are not hurting anyone with their actions. However many of the things men do on Facebook can hurt others. They use Facebook to find sex and as a quick get-out from a relationship. Isn’t this more shocking?

What do you think, is there something inherently sexist in the reporting of this survey or are you truly shocked about the antics of the young women of today? Do you even think it is a problem to be ‘addicted’ to Facebook? Let me know what you think.