Facebook Profiling: Gender differences in adolescents’ Facebook activity and coping strategies

• In Event: 1-165 - Individual Differences in Adolescents’ use of Communication Technology

Integrative Statement

A large majority of adolescents and young adults use social media. Facebook (FB) is the most popular site with 74% of young Facebook users checking their profiles daily (Smith & Anderson, 2018). There are concerns about the effects of the amount of social media use, particularly among adolescent girls (Twenge et al., 2017). Co-construction theory posits that online and offline behaviors often mirror and shape one another and that the content of social media activity may have strong associations with offline wellbeing (Subrahmanyam, Smahel, & Greenfield, 2006). For example, adolescents may use social media to portray and/or cope with their offline problems, which may ameliorate or exacerbate problems depending on the adolescents’ online behaviors. Few studies used adolescents’ social media profiles to systematically observe their online activities.
The present study followed 129 adolescents from the end of 12th grade and captured snapshots of their FB profiles about six months after completing high school. In 12th grade, adolescents reported on their coping strategies using the 28 item Brief Cope (Carver, 1997), from which adaptive (i.e., support seeking, active, planning, reframing, acceptance) and maladaptive (i.e., substance use, denial, disengagement, self-blame, venting, distraction) coping strategy composites were created. A trained assistant and reliability coder then rated each FB page on a 5-point Likert scale to capture the frequency and intensity of their online behaviors across all posts. Profiles were coded for activity related to peer relations (prosocial behaviors, social aggression, and co-rumination), ‘risky’ behaviors (antisocial behaviors, profanity and vulgarity, and sexual presentation), and self-presentation (appearance evaluations, self-aggrandizing, and attention seeking). Interclass correlations between coders were high for all FB behaviors (ICCs ranged from .72 to .94).
First, Table 1 provides the average rating for each online behavior by gender. Overall, there were high ratings of online self-aggrandizing and attention seeking across participants’ profiles. Females were more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors, self-aggrandizing, or attention seeking FB posts than males (ps<.05); there were no gender differences in their 12th grade use of adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies.
Second, regression analyses were used to examine whether adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies predicted FB posting behaviors six months later. Adaptive coping predicted greater prosocial talk (β=.27, p=.003) and maladaptive coping predicted more vulgarity (β=.25, p=.006). However, whether coping strategies predicted FB behaviors differed by gender. For girls, more adaptive coping strategies predicted less social aggression (β= -.41, p=.001), sexual presentation (β= -.36, p=.004), antisocial behaviors (β= -.26, p=.04), and vulgarity (β= -.43, p<.001), and more maladaptive coping strategies predicted less prosocial behaviors (β= -.28, p=.03) and more vulgarity (β=.28, p=.01). For boys, more adaptive coping strategies predicted more appearance evaluation (β=.33, p=.02), and more maladaptive coping strategies predicted more antisocial behaviors (β=.31, p=.03). The results suggest that for girls, coping strategies may play a larger role in their online activities than boys. Implications and future directions will be discussed.

Authors

• Madeleine George, University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Justin William Vollet, University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kaitlyn Burnell, The University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Allycen R Kurup, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marion K Underwood, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author