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Women More Likely To Unfriend Than Men
Hugh Pickens writes "AFP reports that a study by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project shows that women are more likely than men to delete friends from their online social networks like Facebook and tend to choose more restrictive privacy settings. Sixty-seven percent of women who maintain a social networking profile said they have deleted friends compared with 58 percent of men. The study also found that men are nearly twice as likely as women to have posted updates, comments, photos or videos that they later regret (PDF). 'Even as social media users become more active curators of their profile, a small group of what might be described as trigger-happy users say they post updates, comments, photos, or videos that they later regret sharing.'"
"The study also found that men are nearly twice as likely as women to have posted updates, comments, photos or videos that they later regret " or "Men more impulsive than women" Hmmm. Big surprise there.
My brain is overly lubricated
I still don't have a Facebook account, and am no worse the wear for it. I have noted that of my family and friends who do have accounts, the ones who typically talk about their Facebook activity the most are definitely the women, and a lot of that talk seems to swing between gossip and outright vicious assaults. I'll just stay out of that mess, thanks.
Write failed: Broken pipe
There's gotta be more. E.g., Do the women really have more trouble with privacy settings - or does Facebook assume so because women inquire about the settings, whereas men won't stop and ask for directions (also explaining why more men fail to change settings to private)?
Gently reply
What ever happened to discretion? People are so quick to post every thought, feeling, and complaint for the world to see. But then also complain about privacy. No one is forcing you to post about what you ate for breakfast and take a picture of it. The trend seems to point to things only getting worse in the future as more companies focus on you being the product and selling your information and habits to 3rd parties. I remember hearing someone say that if the services are free, YOU are the product.
Women are more likely to friend people they'll end up unfriending later.
If you're going to say something say it without caring who hears it or don't say anything at all.
The above described phenomenon is akin to how women and girls whisper in each others ears, filters are like whispering. The unfriending I see as akin to what I watched a group of girls do in high school. There was about a dozen of them but only 11 could be friends at a time, there was always one girl kicked out of the circle, when she came back they chose another one to be mad at and kicked her out of the circle.
My guess is the regret men have is regret over how a woman reacted to the picture or other content.
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...and GTFO's response was unprintable.
Blank until
...women are more selective than men regarding who to include in their social circle. I could've predicted this from real-world interactions. Women tend to form close-knit cliques. Men will hang with anyone who will get shitfaced drunk with them and commiserate about their problems with women, work, money, etc.
Female's all over the animal kingdom use social exclusion instead of violence in order to punish other females. Exclusion is the primary competitive strategy for all sorts of female animals. Look it up on Wikipedia. Or google it. Its a widely known fact among researchers in the social science. That's how teenage girls bully each other.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
Judging from the differences of what gets posted on my wall, I find that men put up random cool things, pics from something they did with their friends etc while most of the really personal stuff I read such as struggles with life, relationships etc tend to be put up by women. I suspect the gender gap on the privacy settings are simply because woman care more about who reads what they put up.
Women will unfriend someone for wearing the wrong shoes with a skirt, I think men have known this for years.
Oh, and by the way, my conclusion out of all of this is similar to the age old belief, that women come into relationships hoping to change the partner more often (and I believe men come into relationship hoping that the women don't change over time), and both get screwed.
You can't handle the truth.
My own experience with Facebook friends isn't nearly so clear-cut. My friends fall into one of four categories: People I know from childhood (school), people I know from work, people I know from church (conservative, evangelical) and people I know from a dialup BBS network in the 80s. Of those four groups, only the BBS nerds are an even mix of men and women; in the other three groups women dominate (heh) by a vast majority.
And unlike the survey results mentioned in TFS, my female friends tend to be the ones to chatter about personal issues -- daily photos of children and grandchildren doing cute things, updates about their mood or health, etc. The men write about political issues, cars and other "guy toys", restaurants they like, hunting... and some of them only visit Facebook once a month or less.
So the real news here is... your mileage may vary?
You know the old joke about the definition of a bachelor: A insensitive clod who has deprived some poor woman of a divorce.
Its actually not that funny. There are some women* (and not a small minority) who seek drama and conflict. Why do you think the plots of daytime soap operas are so bizarre? Well adjusted people stay the hell away from such emotional wreckage. Particularly on a regular basis (something you can experience with the occasional movie but not an ongoing story line). And they tend to seek out the companionship of others suffering from similar woes, rather than attempting to readjust their outlook by associating with undamaged people.
*OK, some guys too. But if I say 'drama' and 'male', what stereotype comes to mind?
Have gnu, will travel.
> When it comes to privacy, 58 percent of social network users set their profile to private so that only friends can see it.
This should be 100%. I suspect the other 42% don't know how or don't understand the ramifications. (Mild hyperbole, but you know what I mean.)
I understand there's problems with Facebook privacy but if you're going to play at all, you have a responsibility to protect yourself. Just my opinion.
It's also important not to poke "accept" for every friend request you get, without first doing due diligence. If you have one friend in common, that may only mean that your friend may have been stupid enough to click "accept" to a potential social engineer without checking.
I photograph events and travel, and those albums are open. The rest is closed off. Not because I'm "hiding anything", (this is *facebook*) but because there are things I'd tell my friends that I wouldn't tell the general public. I review my privacy settings periodically. I don't do optional Facebook applications, ever. I don't do Facebook games, ever. I don't repost Facebook "forwards", and I will block someone if that's all they're doing. I have lively discussions (in our own words, not cutting and pasting someone else's) with a circle of friends, we share ideas and have some heated arguments, and that's a good thing -- in my opinion, it's the "social" in social networking. The rest is the electronic equivalent of stuffing an envelope with magazine clippings.
I believe that women are more likely to unfriend, but I wonder what the statistic is for blocking. I have less than 200 friends, small by Facebook standards, although I've met most of them and about 25% of them would help me move (and 2 or 3 would help me move a body -- although they'd want to know who's first) and of those I've never unfriended someone no matter how obnoxious. I *have* blocked them from my news stream because they're irritating, natter on too much about nothing (a characteristic of Facebook it seems) or repeatedly try to bait the community out of some desire for attention. These "junk" postings get in the way of the people on my friends list whom I *want* to read.
It doesn't seem right to unfriend. It seems snarky -- a personal insult. Blocking them from my news stream is more like, I haven't taken you out of my address book, but I probably won't be calling you. It would have been interesting to find out if this is a male vs female characteristic. Something like: Given it's time to end the relationship with another person, women are more likely to break up publicly, whereas men are more likely to simply ignore.
I've noticed repeatedly that a personal friend or acquaintance will jump on, friend everyone in sight, load up a bunch of applications, play a bunch of games, and then suddenly disappear. I've asked some of them later about that, and some have said it takes too much time (I can see that) and others have said they lost interest (reasonable also) but many have said that they became alarmed at the lack of privacy. It's almost like there was an event that shook them up and they dropped out. Social networks are hot right now -- generally accepted -- but I wonder what people's perceptions will be in ten years time.
Social networks are like any tool -- you can use it to get work done, or you can use it to poke your eye out. If you're not willing to learn the tool, you shouldn't be surprised at the consequences. There is no "walled garden" social network as far as I know. It's like the rest of the internet -- raw, fertile, potentially dangerous. The knife is sharp; it's important to point it in the right direction. But sometimes a spork just won't do.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't want to be friends with people who have people like me as friends.
Look at any social group of young teenage girls today. They're the most vile, wretched, undisciplined, emotionally hostile human beings that walk the face of the Earth today. They think nothing of torturing their peers emotionally to the point of suicide.
Women want their enemies to suffer socially and emotionally.
... teenage girls ...
and the entirety of western civilisation is at their behest and control. Everything we do is to placate and please them. They have ultimate power but no clue what to do with it.
This is why eastern cultures find western ones so abhorrent. We are without control, worshiping the teenage female form and sacrificing everything in our future for it. I'll have no part of it. It is too late though, we are past the point of no return, this has already effectively destroyed western civilisation. The question is: will any westerners learn from it? I suspect not.
Environmental contaminants and xenoestrogenics responsible for the recent increases in feminisation of boys? Not so much - while probably part of it - it is clear to me that when faced with such a powerful, hostile and cruel selection of young women to pick from that the solution is obvious.