Social Habits of High School Juniors & Seniors: Facebook vs. Texting

Before we started our survey, we decided to do research our topic on the World Wide Web.  Using Google and Yahoo, we searched for any previous studies that researched the relationship between Facebook friends and texting.  We entered searches such as “Relationship between Facebook friends and texting,”  “Average number of Facebook friends vs. average teenage texting,” and “Correlation between Facebook friends and texting for teenagers.”  

                Despite not being able to truly find a study that is similar to our own study, we decided to continue our research by looking at Facebook friend statistics and texting statistics independently.  We searched for the average number of friends people had on Facebook using search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  We searched the phrases “Average teenage Facebook friends,” and “Average number of friends teens have on Facebook.”  We were able to find a few websites that offered information on general Facebook statistics but were unable to find a site that specified age group.  We found that the average number of Facebook friends that a random active user has is approximately one-hundred and thirty (130). (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)  We were able to note that approximately fifty-five  percent Of the teenagers who use the World Wide Web utilize various social networking websites.( http://www.life123.com/parenting/tweens-teens/social-networking/issues-with-teens-and-social-networking.shtml)

                After looking up statistics for Facebook friends, we began to look for teenage texting statistics.  We were more successful in finding results for the appropriate age groups for this category, but we were still unable to find the exact age group that we wanted for our study.  We searched for phrases such as “Average texts received per day by teenager,”  “Teenage texting statistics,” and “High school students average texting.”  We were able to determine that the average amount of texts received by teenagers per month was 1500 texts, which equates to approximately 50 texts per day. (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/04/20/teen-texting-sees-sharp-increase) We were unable to find statistics for the specific age range of juniors and seniors in high school, but the data provided statistics for the 14-17 year old age group, which is very similar to the age range we initially decided to survey at our high school. (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Teens-and-Mobile-Phones/Chapter-2/The-typical-American-teen-who-texts-sends-1500-texts-a-month.aspx?r=1)

                While doing our research, we realized that there were some extraneous factors that could affect the results of our study.  Firstly, we realized that many people have a number of Facebook friends that are hardly friends.  Many articles indicate and prove this fact. (http://www.parade.com/health/mom-to-mom/2010/05/06-does-social-networking-adversely-affect-the-quality-of-kids-friendship)Therefore, we realize that the number of Facebook friends a person has cannot truly indicate how socially active a person may or may not be.  Texting is similar in this manner because different people text superfluously while not being as active on Facebook.