Abstract
Given the prevalence of social network sites (SNS) uptake among college students, and Facebook use in particular, we seek to understand the variety of ways in which Facebook is embedded in the routine, everyday lives of undergraduates. In addition to Facebook use, we aim to shed light on non-use; why do some American undergraduates choose to use Facebook sparingly, or not at all? Our findings indicate that while the majority of students were frequent Facebook users, they sought control over their Facebook use by articulating a moral space of norms governing interactions with parents, friends, and strangers; through selective and temporary de-domestication of the technology; and through non-use.
Today's undergraduate students are growing up in a society saturated with digital technologies such as the personal computer, Internet, and mobile devices; many students have integrated one or more of these technologies into their everyday lives. Of the vast number and type of websites available on the Internet, social network sites (SNS) in particular have a significant place in college students' everyday lives; in the United States, 87% of young adults aged 18–29 years have Facebook accounts, compared to 71% of the general population aged 18–65 years (Duggan et al., 2015). Facebook has become increasingly embedded in the everyday lives of undergraduate students, with several studies reporting that the majority of undergraduates log in daily (Bosch, 2009; Madge et al., 2009; Mazman and Usluel, 2010; Ophus and Abbitt, 2009; Roblyer et al., 2010; Subrahmanyam et al., 2008). Junco (2012) found that over 90% of American undergraduates spent more than one and a half hours per day on the site.
The popular discourse in the United States suggests that the technology uses and expectations of these “digital youth” or “digital natives” are unique; that growing up surrounded by technology predisposes young people to fully embrace technology and welcome it into their lives. While many college students do embrace technology, critics suggest that the technologically determinist assumption underlying this discourse privileges mainstream accounts of technology use while masking alternative narratives that describe non-conforming uses of technology, including non-use (e.g. Lohnes and Kinzer, 2007; Lohnes Watulak, 2012; Selwyn, 2009b). Facebook is increasingly integrated into informal and even formal learning environments. In order to best serve all students, it is important for educators, administrators, and others who work with students to understand the experiences of those who choose not to use Facebook (or other SNS) in expected ways.
Therefore, we seek to understand and describe the variety of ways in which Facebook is embedded in the routine, everyday lives of American undergraduates. In addition to Facebook use, we aim to shed light on non-use; why do some undergraduates choose to use Facebook sparingly, or not at all? The data reported in this paper are drawn from a semester-long, qualitative study of the technology practices of 12 undergraduate students at a university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Specifically, we sought to shed light on the following research questions:
In what ways is Facebook embedded in the everyday routines of undergraduate students? How do undergraduates negotiate the uptake and use of Facebook in their everyday lives? Why do some undergraduates choose to use Facebook sparingly, or not at all?
This paper employs domestication theory as a framework for exploring Facebook use in college students' lives. Domestication theory is employed to “describe and analyze processes of (media) technology's acceptance, rejection and use” (Berker et al., 2005: 1). Our findings indicate that while the majority of students in this study were frequent Facebook users, they sought control over their Facebook use by articulating a moral space of norms governing interactions with parents, friends, and strangers; through selective and temporary de-domestication of the technology; and through non-use.
Overview of college students' Facebook use
In this section, we highlight current research on college student Facebook use in three broad categories: communication and relationship practices; privacy concerns; and use in the academic context. We acknowledge that research on college student Facebook use extends into other areas, as well; for example, there is a growing literature that explores the relationship between Facebook use and well-being outcomes (e.g. Kalpidou et al., 2011; Liu and Yu, 2013; Tandoc et al., 2015). However, the three areas we selected to highlight provide the most relevant context for our research questions, and thus we do not include well-being outcomes in our review. We also note that our overview includes articles that refer to SNS more broadly, although the majority of articles focus at least in part on Facebook given its current status as the most widely used SNS.
Communication and relationship practices
A significant strand of research on SNS explores the role that such sites play in the personal lives of college students, particularly to support their communication and relationship practices. Subrahmanyam et al. (2008) found a 49% overlap between individuals listed as top offline and top SNS friends, particularly among those students who used SNS to communicate with their offline friends. Pempek et al.'s (2009) study of 92 undergraduate students supported this finding, and suggested that in the college context, SNS facilitate socializing with peers, both online and offline, in ways that may be beneficial to students' emerging adulthood. A recent study examined the use of Facebook as part of a broader constellation of communication technologies that undergraduates use in creating and maintaining relationships, finding that Facebook was primarily used for early communication but was not seen as an appropriate technology to mediate more intimate stages of the relationship (Yang et al., 2014).
Using a social capital framework, Ellison et al.'s (2007) survey of 286 undergraduate students found that Facebook was used in general to facilitate relationships within the college community (bridging social capital); to stay connected with friends and acquaintances from high school and other colleges (maintaining social capital); and to a lesser extent, to support pre-existing close relationships with family and friends (bonding social capital). Only social information-seeking behaviors – browsing user profiles to learn more about a connection – were found to be predictive of social capital (Ellison et al., 2011). Valenzuela et al. (2009) found a small but significant relationship between college students' (N = 2603) use of Facebook and elements of social capital including life satisfaction, social trust, and civic and political engagement.
Privacy
A second category of SNS research examines the extent to which young adult Facebook users are aware of and change their privacy settings, as well as their awareness of the consequences of sharing certain types of material on the Internet (i.e. Acquisiti and Gross, 2006; boyd and Hargittai, 2010). Concerns about privacy may lead some students to choose not to participate in Facebook or other SNS; those who do use SNS often find ways to maximize their privacy within the affordances of the software (Tufecki, 2008). Like Tufecki, Debatin et al. (2009) found that for many college students, the benefits outweighed the risks of participating in SNS, particularly when they had not experienced a breech of privacy first hand. Drawing on the data from their seven-year longitudinal study, Stutzman et al. (2012) found that Facebook's constant changes to its privacy settings, with the goal of moving toward making more user information public by default, has resulted in an increase in the amount of user data that is shared with the public and with third-party data brokers. Overall, these findings suggest that future research focus on helping college students to fully understand the implications of living in a society in which the default setting, as it were, is to share personal information in public and semi-public online environments.
SNS in the academic context
Finally, work on the use and role of SNS in an academic context comprises a growing literature. Karpinski and Duberstein's (2009) exploratory study of the relationship between Facebook use and grade point average (GPA) found that non-users of the SNS had significantly higher GPAs than Facebook users. However, Pasek et al. (2009) found no significant correlation between Facebook use and lower academic achievement in college when controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. Junco (2015) examined the relationship between Facebook use, class standing, and academic achievement, and found that class standing impacted student academic achievement in different ways. While Facebook use was negatively correlated with first-year student GPA, it had no impact on fourth-year student GPA. For second- and third-year students, Facebook use was negatively correlated with GPA only when multitasking. However, more large-scale and longitudinal work is needed in order to clarify whether Facebook use is related to student academic achievement.
A number of researchers have examined student use of Facebook for other academic purposes. In his analysis of Facebook wall posts, Selwyn (2009a) found that while students' self-motivated academic use of Facebook was generally limited to coordinating assignments or sharing factual information with peers, it nonetheless was an important part of their overall social identity work and informal learning. Use of Facebook during pre-registration by first-year students to connect with their future classmates was found to aid their transition to college, and helped to facilitate integration into the social life of the university (Madge et al., 2009). Facebook use on mobile devices has been found to enable “serendipitous social meetings” on campus (Barkuus and Tashiro, 2010: 133). Junco (2012) found a positive relationship between specific communicative Facebook activities and student engagement on campus. Finally, given its popularity, many educators have sought to find ways to integrate Facebook into formal classroom or academic activities (i.e. Manca and Ranieri, 2013; Maranto and Barton, 2010; Munoz and Towner, 2009), although Selwyn (2009a) cautioned that it might be best to leave student Facebook use to the realm of informal learning.
Summary
The literature to date provides a good sense of the role that SNS play in college students' communication and relationship practices, their attitudes toward privacy, and the ways in which Facebook impacts academic settings. However, non-use of SNS in general, and Facebook in particular, is not addressed in the literature. Furthermore, the predominant use of survey instruments limits our understanding of how and why undergraduates use Facebook within particular contexts and for particular purposes. McLaughlin and Vitak's (2012) research provides one exception; they interviewed 26 third-year and fourth-year undergraduates in order to explore social norms of Facebook use. Barkuus and Tashiro (2010) employed interview and time-use diary methods to explore how mobile Facebook use is embedded in student socialization. Our study therefore contributes a needed qualitative perspective to the literature on college students' Facebook use, and in particular an in-depth understanding of how undergraduates use Facebook (or why they choose not to use it); where it fits into their daily routines and within the context of their overall technology use; and what values and norms they assign the technology as they interact with it. In the next section, we describe the theoretical framework that we employed in this study.
Domestication theory
Taking a social shaping perspective, domestication theory views technology uptake as a complex process, filled with tensions, and never fully complete. Early domestication studies focused primarily on the uptake of new technologies within the domestic sphere – the household – and investigated the interplay between technological affordances, individual preferences, and the temporal, spatial, economic, and social dynamics of family life. However, as Haddon (1994) suggested, “processes outside the home interact with the activity within the home” (as cited in Berker et al., 2005: 8); and especially in the age of social media, domestication research has expanded its focus beyond the four walls of the home.
Domestication as a non-linear process of uptake
The literature describes “four intersecting processes” (Bakardjieva, 2010: 70) involved in domestication: objectification (the introduction of a new technology into one's daily life); appropriation (the activities involved in inscribing meaning and value to the new technology, leading to decisions about its appropriate place or use); incorporation (the ways in which a new technology becomes embedded in, and influences, the activities that comprise one's daily routine), and conversion (the ways in which users demonstrate their use of the new technology to others).
At the same time, once successfully domesticated, a tool can become problematic or uncomfortable due to changes in the technology or the environment, and thus de-domesticated. Once de-domesticated, the same tool can be re-domesticated, integrated once more into the everyday life of a person or group. This idea highlights a key difference between domestication theory, and other theories of technology diffusion or uptake (i.e. Rogers, 2003) that describe a predominately static, linear, and “overly rationalistic” process (Berker et al., 2005: 5).
Non-use
Furthermore, domestication research is interested in describing both use and non-use. Non-use is not necessarily a result of technical barriers or challenges to use; rather, it is often a conscious decision on the part of consumers: non-users can be viewed as being critical consumers to the extent that they are trying to balance a range of considerations in their lives at any moment and “on balance” a new technology does not fit in, or is a low priority, or is not worth the effort or cost (Haddon, 2011: 320).
Indeed, studies of non-use often challenge popular assumptions about technology uptake, such as utopian discourses of technological change that view new technology as inevitably leading to improvements in quality of life (Punie et al., 2005).
The moral space
Finally, in the process of negotiating the uptake of technology in our everyday lives, domestication theory suggests “judgments of appropriateness and practices of use are legitimated” (Silverstone, 2005: 15) within what domestication theory terms the “moral space.” The moral space is created by groups of users, and is in many ways a normative space (Hartmann, 2005). At the same time, it is also a generative space, one in which users struggle for control, and negotiate use and non-use, often in creative ways. Punie et al. (2005: 102) noted that the struggle for control does not equal resistance to a particular technology, but rather “an active acceptance process.” Users may seek to control the practice, or the discourse and values surrounding the practice. Of note for the present research, Hartmann (2005: 141) examined the role of technology in the lives of 550 Belgian young adults, and found that “the adoption of new media appeared to be in part frightening and problematic, partly because of the pressure to conform to high expectations” fueled in part by public and media discourse. The moral space created by these users occupied a “middle ground” between non-use and extreme or overuse of technology (Hartmann, 2005). Our findings support and expand on this research.
Methodology
Methodologically speaking, domestication research has a tradition of using qualitative approaches to understand the process of technology uptake from the perspective of users (Bakardjieva, 2010). The data reported here are drawn from a study of undergraduate student technology practices that aimed to explore the range of students' personal and academic technology practices. Facebook was one of the most frequently discussed technologies, referenced across conversations and topics, within the broader context of the student's everyday lives.
For this paper, we present findings from interviews, focus group interviews, and time-use diaries, in order to describe the ways in Facebook is embedded in the routine, everyday lives of college students. Specifically, we sought to shed light on the following research questions:
In what ways is Facebook embedded in the everyday routines of undergraduate students? How do undergraduates negotiate the uptake and use of Facebook in their everyday lives? Why do some undergraduates choose to use Facebook sparingly, or not at all?
Setting and participants
The study was conducted at a mid-size university (total enrollment approximately 21,000) in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States during the spring semester, 2011. The university draws students primarily from the region, although recent years have seen a rise in national and international enrollment.
Sampling and recruitment
Twelve undergraduate students volunteered to participate in the study. As is common with qualitative design, we used purposeful sampling in order to identify participants who could provide insight into our questions. Given that we were interested in a range of ways that undergraduates used Facebook, our criteria for participation were intentionally broad; the primary criterion was status as currently enrolled in an undergraduate major at our university.
Our sample also comprises a convenience sample. Participants were recruited via email sent to students currently or recently enrolled in a required general education course in the College of Education (the college in which the first author teaches). Posters were also hung throughout the College of Education building. A $25 gift card to the university store was offered as compensation for participation.
Nine of the 12 participants had taken the required general education course with the first author in the past. However, these students were not enrolled in courses with the author at the time of the study, and given the author's teaching schedule, they were unlikely to do so in the future. In other words, while the first author was in a position of power within the group given our identities as university professor/researcher and students enrolled in the university, she was not in a position to impact their grades, or their academic position or standing at the university. The university's Institutional Review Board approved the research, and students were given the opportunity to review the requirements of participation and ask questions about the study before providing informed consent.
Demographic profile of participants
Participants included ten women and two men, with seven first-year students, three second-year students, one third-year student, and one fourth-year student. Eleven students attended the university full time, one part time. Nine majors were represented: psychology, elementary education, criminal justice, music education, secondary education, deaf studies, early childhood education, family studies, special education, and French literature. The majority of students (ten) were born in 1991–1992, placing them squarely in the generational category of Millennials, and as traditional-age undergraduate students. Two of the students were born in the mid- to late 1980s, and thus are considered non-traditional age undergraduates. All 12 students identified as white for their race/ethnicity.
Regarding technology ownership, all of the students reported having either exclusive or easy access to the following: laptop computers, cell phones, smart phones, MP3 players, digital still cameras, high-speed internet access, printers, scanners, flash drives, CD and DVD burners.
Data sources
Interviews
Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data about the role of technology in the students' everyday lives. In particular, we were interested in hearing about students' academic and personal technology uses, as well as the attitudes, beliefs, and values they held and assigned to the technologies that surrounded them as college students. Sample questions included, “What was your experience like, growing up with technology?” “What type of technology resources do you have available to you at home?” “Please describe a typical day for you.” “Tell me a bit about the technology here on campus.” “Tell me a bit about how technology is used in your courses here.”
Focus group interviews
Focus groups can provide more spontaneous communication and thus data that might not be elicited in a one on one interview (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009), which was of interest for this study, given the informal topic of discussion. In the focus groups, we were particularly interested in exploring the students' time-use diary data in depth. We used a semi-structured protocol; sample questions included, “How do you define technology?” “What are some of things you wrote down [in your time use diary] and why did you decide that was a technology?” “In what ways do you think the context of what you were doing at the time influenced what technologies you wrote about in your diary?” “Looking back at your diary for the day, did anything about your technology use surprise you?”
Time-use diaries
Time-use diaries can provide insight into the processes of everyday life (Gershuny and Sullivan, 1998), within specific contexts. Participants record data close to the time of the event, alleviating some concerns regarding the quality of retrospective data (Bolger et al., 2003). This method is used to examine everyday phenomena at the individual and aggregate group levels. Time-use diaries are one of the tools employed in domestication research (Haddon, 2006), particularly to provide a sense of “the space-time geography” of media use (Silverstone et al., 1992: 214). See Appendix A for the time-use diary template given to students in this study.
Data collection
Each student participated in two individual interviews conducted by the first author; one in late February (45–60 min.) and one in early May (30 min). To track their interactions with technology with the time-use diary, participants were asked to select a day prior to the March and April meetings on which to complete their diary. The diary was provided to them in Word document format, and they were invited to either complete them digitally or to print it out and fill it in, according to their preference. In order to maximize participation, we left these choices to the “convenience of respondent” (Harvey, 1999: 23). Twenty-four total diaries were collected (two per student); weekdays were represented more heavily than weekends.
Students brought the diaries to the focus group meetings for discussion. Focus groups were facilitated by the first author with the assistance of the second author, and met three times during the semester: at the end of February, March, and April. In order to accommodate student schedules, two sessions each month were offered; students were only required to attend one of the two. One meeting in April was cancelled due to lack of attendance, resulting in five total meetings. Each hour-long focus group meeting was recorded and transcribed.
Data analysis
The individual and focus group interview transcripts were analyzed by the first author using constant comparative coding, in which the codes emerged from the data, rather than from previously held hypotheses (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Several passes were taken through the data, to create codes and categories based on emerging patterns, and to refine existing codes and categories.
In time-use diary research, the episode is the unit of analysis. Each entry in the diary is an episode; for each episode, participants record data along pre-determined activity dimensions. Typical time-use diary activity dimensions include “primary activity, temporal location, secondary activity, location of activity, with whom” (Harvey, 1999: 27). The activity dimensions used for this study were: What technology was being used (Primary Activity); Time/Duration of use; Where; and Why (Secondary Activity).
The total number of recorded episodes was 261 (across a total of 24 diaries, two per participant). The second author used open coding to code the columns indicating activity dimensions including primary activity, secondary activity, and where the activity took place, in order to allow the data to emerge from participant responses. Next, the data were analyzed along several analytic dimensions or “derived dimensions” (Harvey, 1999: 28), including sequence of events, relationship between time of day and certain activities, and episode duration (i.e. if a student noted that text messaging began at 12:15 pm and ended at 12:30 pm, duration = 15 minutes). Given our small sample size, our analyses remained primarily descriptive.
Results
We found that Facebook was firmly embedded into the students' daily routines. Nine of 12 students recorded instances of Facebook use in their time-use diaries; during individual interviews, 11 of 12 students told us they used Facebook. The time-use diary data showed 36 episodes of Facebook use (always listed as a Secondary Activity, most often associated with laptop use as the Primary Activity), comprising 14% of total technology use (reported by episode). Although Facebook was used throughout the day, students described using it most often as part of a morning or evening routine; the time-use diary data shows that 27 of the 36 reported episodes took place in a private space (dorm room, dorm, bedroom): “I'll wake up; take a shower; brush my teeth; check my Facebook and like my email … and I'll head out to my first class” (John, interview, 3/2/11). For John, as well as for several other students, Facebook was one element of a larger communication routine; when we examined other Secondary Activities associated with Facebook use, we found that email was listed alongside Facebook use in 37% of reported episodes.
The total number of reported episodes in the time-use diaries was somewhat lower than we anticipated, which we address in the limitations section below. However, our participants discussed their Facebook use at length in their individual and focus group interviews. We draw on these data to explore the following themes: norms within the moral space of Facebook use, temporary de-domestication of Facebook, and Facebook non-use.
Norms within the moral space of Facebook use
While the students in this study embraced the benefits that Facebook offers in keeping up with friends, they also co-created (with other Facebook users) what domestication theory terms a moral space of acceptable rules, or norms of use, by comparing and judging themselves and their uses with the broader societal discourse around technology, with their peers, and with older generations (parents, grandparents).
For example, the older generation in particular was a topic of discussion during focus group meetings as well as during the individual interviews. Students described the phenomenon of Facebook “creeping,” in which users view – but do not interact with – other user profiles. This behavior, which they most often associated with parents/family members, was viewed negatively. As Amelia concisely stated, “now [my parents] have Facebook and they're on it constantly and it's a little bit weird” (interview, 2/16/11). The “weirdness” stemmed from the fact that the parents were not familiar with certain conventions and norms of Facebook use familiar to the students. During a focus discussion, Julia described what happened when her father violated one of the unspoken norms of interaction among Facebook friends: My dad's the biggest Facebook creep. Like I told my friend, and she blocked him. [laughter from the group] … I'm like dad, “You are not handling Facebook well … you are new to this, you don't know the rules” (focus group interview, 3/30/11). I don't need what I'm doing popping up on [my mom's] news feed just because she only has 20 friends [and therefore she would certainly have seen], so what I do is hide some of the stuff, anything that my friends post on my wall (interview, 5/12/11).
Furthermore, the students articulated a general set of norms governing friending and de-friending in which de-friending was an option rarely pursued for any Facebook friend. Several students reported that they would not de-friend anyone because “that's so mean if you want to de-friend somebody” (Sarah, interview, 5/5/11). Rather than remove someone from their Facebook friend list, for most of the students, hiding updates from troublesome friends and acquaintances was seen as preferable to deleting them altogether. Kendra was an exception; she made the choice to de-friend a large number of acquaintances “that I was never friends with in high school that I really did not care much for at all … They posted things like every five minutes so it would just take up all the room [in my news feed]” (interview, 5/9/11).
Students in the study also articulated shared norms surrounding the addition of new friends to their Facebook friend list. As with the students in McLaughlin and Vitak's (2012) study, the majority of our participants agreed that they would not honor a friend request from someone whom they had not met in person at least in passing (say at a party or other school event). Two students also expressed concerns about the impact of their Facebook friendships on their current or future professional lives. For example: I don't need excessive friends [in my friend list] because … if an employer comes and sees I have like three thousand friends, they're like why? I don't put any pictures up that are of partying … They say if it's on there it's on there forever (Dana, interview, 5/12/11).
Temporary and selective de-domestication of Facebook
Some students in the study chose not to use Facebook at specific times, for specific reasons. These instances of temporary de-domestication and eventual re-domestication, which were framed by discussions surrounding the appropriateness of the times and places into which Facebook was incorporated, highlight the non-linear nature of domestication. For example, Steven appreciated the fact that Facebook afforded the possibility of staying connected, but saw this as contextually relevant: “I'm connected but if the circumstance calls for me not to be connected I won't be connected” (interview, 4/28/11).
Related to this idea of contextual relevance, a small group of students were cautious about using Facebook in situations in which they felt it detracted from the face-to-face experience. For example, Shannon spoke at length about an experience that she had during her last spring break in which she felt that a friend was using Facebook at an inappropriate time (while relaxing on the beach): I saw my best friend over spring break, and she just sat there for like an hour on her [phone] … going through her Facebook and just rolling down the news feed. I was like “wow, I hope I don't ever do that.” … I just think it's so anti-social (interview, 5/12/11).
Our data also showed that several students found mixing personal/social and academic-related technology use (such as having Facebook open in the background while writing a paper) to be distracting. In order to avoid such pitfalls, our participants developed strategies for controlling their Facebook use at times when they felt it important to prioritize academic work over socializing with friends. Steven focused by only having “one bar or the one tab [in the web browser] or whatever I need to do cause I don't want to get distracted” (interview, 4/28/11). Kendra's strategy was to unplug from the network altogether: “I try to turn my Internet off [by turning off the wireless signal] … so I can just focus on what I'm doing” (interview, 5/9/11). During finals week, when Facebook was too difficult to avoid, Sheila and John asked friends to change their Facebook password for them – effectively locking them out of their Facebook account. John also relied on peer pressure to keep his Facebook use in check: “during finals week, if you go in the library people give you dirty looks if they see you're on Facebook, because there's only so many computers available” (interview, 5/9/11). However, this too represented a temporary de-domestication of Facebook; at the end of finals week, Sheila and John retrieved their new passwords from their friends and resumed their Facebook use. These examples highlight the interesting mix of acceptance and caution that underscores college students' complex relationship with Facebook.
An instance of non-use
Eleven of 12 participants in our study had Facebook accounts and logged on to Facebook on at least a weekly basis. One student, however, did not use Facebook at all, due to her concerns about privacy: “I don't have a Facebook, I don't have a MySpace. … I enjoy my privacy. I just don't want the world to know even basic information about me” (Wendy, interview, 5/4/11). Wendy chose abstinence from social networking as a method of control over the technology, rather than control the flow of information about her via strategies such as restricting access to her profile. The fact that Wendy was one of the non-traditional undergraduate participants in terms of her age (born in the 1980s) may also be relevant in terms of Wendy's lack of SNS uptake, as SNS would not have been a central element of her social development during her junior high and high school years. In the individual interviews and the focus group discussions, Wendy was reserved, and rarely joined in our group discussions. Given her concerns about privacy, her personal style, and her technology background, it seems as though for Wendy, SNS use “was not worth the effort or cost” (Haddon, 2011: 320).
Discussion
The goal of our study was to explore and describe the ways in which Facebook was embedded in the routine, everyday lives of undergraduates. In addition, we sought to shed light on non-use; that is, why some undergraduates choose to use Facebook sparingly, or not at all. Domestication theory served as a useful lens to illuminate these complex practices; in many ways, our findings echo those of Hartmann (2005: 141), who found in her study of Belgian young adults' Internet use that “Far-reaching adoption into everyday life co-exists with a widespread condemnation of certain kinds of use.” Facebook was highly domesticated in the lives of 11 of the 12 participants in our study as an integral part of their daily communication routine. As with Pempek et al.'s (2009) participants, students in our study saved most of their Facebook use for the evening, when they had returned to their dorm room at the end of the day's activities. Our participants recognized that Facebook was a central component of their social lives; and, at times that became uncomfortable, leading them to develop strategies to control – and at times, temporarily de-domesticate – the technology.
We found that participants also sought control over Facebook through the articulation of norms governing interactions with parents, friends, and strangers. The participants expressed consensus during group discussions that “creeping” was an unacceptable form of interaction, and associated it most often with parents. The participants in our study were primarily first-year students, which may explain both the parents' constant monitoring, as well as the students' sensitivity to this behavior. Norms also governed both friending and de-friending practices, and students were selective about both those from whom they accepted new friend requests and those whom they removed from Facebook via de-friending (in practice, almost no one). McLaughlin and Vitak (2012) posited that the selectivity in friending practices exhibited by their participants might have been due to their population – third-year and fourth-year college students mindful of entering a job market where self-presentation can impact job prospects. Impression management was also a concern of some our first-year and second-year student participants, particularly among those students who planned a career in education. As Dana (an elementary education major) suggested in our interview, pre-service teachers are encouraged to maintain a professionally acceptable Facebook page early and often during their college careers.
Finally, the students who chose not to use Facebook at all, or to abstain in certain contexts, were not ignorant of the technology and the possibilities afforded by its use. In other words, they knew what Facebook had to offer, and chose not to use it anyway. Our findings indicate that our participants made such judgments about the appropriateness of Facebook use based on contextual factors such as time and place (needing to get homework done, enjoying time with friends at the beach). Indeed, while young adults have often been identified with utopian discourses about technology which suggest that they are “meant to push boundaries (both technological and socio-cultural) rather than accept limitations” (Hartmann, 2005: 143), we believe that many undergraduate students in our study employed various methods of social and technical control to make careful and critical decisions regarding their Facebook uptake and use.
Limitations
Data reported in this paper were collected in 2011, and we acknowledge this as a potential limitation, especially in light of the fast pace of technological change and concurrent shifts in technological practices and norms. However, recent research on youth Facebook use echoes our findings; for example, around students' creation of a moral space of norms around Facebook friendship with parents. Mullen and Hamilton (2016) found that 70% of the secondary school students in their study accepted parental friend requests, while at the same time employing strategies to manage their privacy and deny their parents access to certain information on their profiles. Likewise, 82% of undergraduate students in Ball, Wanzer, and Servoss's (2013) study accepted parental friend requests, although a minority of these students (25.3%) modified their privacy settings; interestingly, those who adjusted their privacy settings more frequently were also those students who updated their profiles more frequently. These similar findings suggest that our work still has relevance today.
We believe that Facebook use may have been under-reported by the students in our study. Pempek et al. (2009) used a diary measure to track the daily Facebook use of 92 undergraduate students, and found that on average students used Facebook for 27.93 minutes a day during the week, and 28.44 minutes a day during the weekend. In our case, some students told us they were not sure how to record Facebook use – for example, how to indicate episode duration – given that it was often open in the background on the computer for several hours, as students worked on homework, watched TV, etc. During the individual interviews, we asked students to describe a typical day for them at the university; several students described Facebook as an ambient presence, particularly in the evening. For example: “Go to class, come home, go on the computer. Facebook is usually like always up just as like a running background. … that's what I mainly use my computer for” (Julia, interview, 2/16/11).
It is possible that this type of always-on Facebook use was difficult to capture with our time-use diary instrument, which focused on overall technology use rather than a specific technology. Also, given that Facebook seems to be an ambient presence for many college students, we may need to rethink the use of episode duration as a measure of time spent with Facebook.
Conclusion
Domestication theory helped us to shed light on the complexity of undergraduate Facebook use, and non-use. In particular, our findings suggest that for many of the participants in our study, Facebook use is not all or nothing; rather, users choose to de-domesticate and re-domesticate for specific purposes and within specific contexts. At the same time, one of our participants chose not to domesticate Facebook at all. The latter findings are particularly significant, given that the literature on college student Facebook use tends to paint with a broad brush, portraying all college students as avid users of Facebook. While this is true for many college students, it is equally important to understand the experiences of those who choose not to use Facebook (or other SNS) in expected ways. As described above, Facebook is increasingly integrated into informal and even formal learning environments, and those who direct these efforts need to be aware that Facebook will not be universally welcomed by all students.
Finally, we believe that it is important to capture individual and collective student experiences through the use of qualitative methods. Future research using a domestication theory lens might provide in-depth descriptions of how undergraduates use Facebook (or why they choose not to use it); where Facebook fits into their daily routines and within the context of their overall technology use; and what values and norms they assign the technology as they interact with it. We suggest that another fruitful avenue for research would be to examine Facebook non-use within the broader framework of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006), focusing particularly on the potential consequences for users who choose not to participate. Such rich descriptions of undergraduate Facebook use – and especially, non-use – will help us to more fully understand the complex interplay between the technological affordances, individual preferences, and the temporal, spatial, economic, and social dynamics that shape undergraduate Facebook use.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.