A developmental perspective regarding the behaviour of adolescents, young adults, and adults on social network sites

Young people are often seen as a generation that shares too much, too openly online. This paper provides support for taking a developmental perspective to understand individuals behaviour’ on social network sites in the forms of sharing information and the type of contacts. Adolescents, young adults, and adults’ use of social network sites was investigated and compared to developmental expectations based on the needs for relationship development and identity development. Data were gathered by means of an online survey among 1008 respondents in the age range of 12 to 83-year-old. The results showed that adolescents have most contacts and were most likely to add unknown contacts, while young adults disclosed most information and adjusted privacy settings most often. These results match expectations based on adolescents’ and young adults’ greater need for relationship and identity development compared to adults. Implications of these findings in relation to future regulations of online behaviour are discussed.

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