Women are more likely than men to delete friends from
their online social networks like
Facebook and tend to choose more restrictive
privacy settings, according to a study
published on Friday.
The study by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American
Life Project also found that men were nearly twice as likely as
women to have posted content online that they later regret.
Sixty-three percent of social network
users have deleted people from their friend lists, according to the
study, up from 56 percent in 2009.
Sixty-seven percent of women who maintain a social networking profile said they have deleted friends
compared with 58 percent of men.
When it comes to privacy, 58 percent of social network users set
their profile to private so that only friends can see it.
Nineteen percent allow friends of friends to view their profile
and 20 percent keep their profile public.
Women are significantly more likely than men -- by a 67 percent
to 48 percent margin -- to set their profile to private, the study
said.
As for the ease of using privacy controls,
those surveyed were evenly divided.
Forty-eight percent said they have some difficulty with privacy
controls while 49 percent said they did not experience any
difficulty.
The study found that men are nearly twice as likely as women to
have posted updates, comments, photos or videos that they later
regret.
Eleven percent of social network users say they have posted
content they regret with 15 percent of men saying they have done so
and just eight percent of women.
Ninety-three percent of social network users surveyed said they
have a profile on Facebook, up from 73 percent in 2009.
The popularity of rival Myspace continues to wane, the study
found. Twenty-three percent of social network users said they have
a Myspace profile, down from 48 percent in 2009.
While just six percent of social network users said they had a
presence on Twitter in 2009, 11 percent are now using the
short-messaging service.
The survey of 2,277 adults was conducted in April and May of
last year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage
points.
-- Yahoo!
