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June 12, 2008, 03:44 PM ET
Educause Survey Shows Students Watch Their Privacy on Facebook
Apparently, college students have heard enough horror stories about potential employers scouring Facebook that many are restricting who can see their profiles — so that any snapshots of drunken revelry, or the like, are available only to friends.
Preliminary results of an Educause survey of more than 27,000 students nationwide indicates that the vast majority take some steps to rein in access to their profiles on social networks.
This is the first year that Educause’s Center for Applied Research has included in-depth questions about social networking in its annual student survey, and officials shared early findings at a meeting in Boulder this week.
About 45 percent of students reported that they put “a lot of restrictions” on access to their profiles, and 42 percent said they applied some restrictions. Only 12 percent said they did not restrict access.
“When we talk to students, they think they understand the risk and they do restrict who can see it,” says Judith B. Caruso, a fellow at the Educause center and director of policy and planning at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She says she and other researchers conducted focus groups with students in addition to the survey.
Eighty-five percent of students reported using social networks. Of those, about 89 percent said they used Facebook and 48 percent used MySpace.
Ms. Caruso says that the amount of social-network usage varies widely. Five percent of the students surveyed said they were on the systems for more than 20 hours a week.
Complete results from the survey are scheduled to be released in the fall. —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Student-Life
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