Facebook and socializing among high school students

Abstract

Facebook is currently the most popular friend-networking site in the world. The concept of friends on social networking site does not coincide with the notion of friends in real life. Nevertheless, Facebook is a social network that is based on real friends with the possibility of accepting strangers. In a study on a sample of 150 pupils from High School of Economics, we found that all have a profile on Facebook, the majority spends two hours a day on Facebook and has over a hundred Facebook friends. Since we studied only the social aspect of using Facebook, we found that Facebook is used primarily as a support and continuation of socializing with real friends, but that there is a group of young people who prefers Facebook compared to conventional forms of socializing. Four typical groups of high school students were discriminated compared to the use of Facebook and socializing: Withdrown, Athletes, Virtual and Friendly.

Facebook je trenutno najpopularnija prijateljska mreža na internetu u svetu. Pojam prijatelja na društvenoj mreži na internetu se ne poklapa sa pojmom prijatelja u stvarnom životu. Uprkos tome, Facebook je društvena mreža koja se zasniva na stvarnim prijateljima sa mogućnošću prihvatanja i nepoznatih ljudi. U istraživanju na uzorku 150 srednjoškolaca ekonomske škole ustanovili smo da svi imaju profil na Facebook-u, da većina provodi do dva sata na Facebook-u dnevno i ima preko sto Facebook prijatelja. S obzirom da smo istraživali samo društveni aspekt upotrebe Facebook-a ustanovili smo da se Facebook prvenstveno koristi kao nastavak i podrška druženja sa stvarnim prijateljima ali da postoji grupa mladih koja preferira druženje na Facebook-u u odnosu na uobičajene oblike druženja. Izdvojene su četiri tipične grupe srednjoškolaca u odnosu na upotrebu Facebook-a i druženje: Povučeni, Sportisti, Virtuelni i Druželjubivi.