THE POSTING PARADOX: FACEBOOK VS. TWITTER

Abstract

Social networking has become the Internet’s most common activity and college students are some of its most fervent users. Unfortunately, using social networks places college students at risk because of the content that they often post. Previous research has shown that students commonly post content on social networking sites that could damage their chances for employment. Although students know the risks that they are taking, many continue to post content that is inappropriate. Researchers have dubbed this behavior the “posting paradox”. In order to better understand the paradox, this paper reports the results of a field study which compares student uses of two of the most popular social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. The results of the study indicate that students post inappropriate content on both sites, with the paradox being more pronounced on Twitter. The paper discusses the implications of these results and proposes areas for future research.

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