Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use

Facebook is quickly becoming one of the most popular tools for social communication. However, Facebook is somewhat different from other Social Networking Sites as it demonstrates an offline-to-online trend; that is, the majority of Facebook Friends are met offline and then added later. The present research investigated how the Five-Factor Model of personality relates to Facebook use. Despite some expected trends regarding Extraversion and Openness to Experience, results indicated that personality factors were not as influential as previous literature would suggest. The results also indicated that a motivation to communicate was influential in terms of Facebook use. It is suggested that different motivations may be influential in the decision to use tools such as Facebook, especially when individual functions of Facebook are being considered.

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