Generations and Media Fruition of Social Networks

The participative logic of the Web 2.0 and the spreading phenomenon of the social network are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and researchers. Even if social networks are typical of every social constructs and consist in a group of people sharing some sort of bonds, family or more superficial one. The user generated logic of Web2.0 has further implemented the relational aspects of Internet. Indeed, beside the creative role that users apply to create different content outside of professional role and platform, they also have the possibility to build and shape their relationships thanks to the social network. Lately, researcher have focused on the structure and working of online social networks employed to foster connection-sharing, social capital generation and effective communication (Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Donath, 2007; Ellison et al., 2007). The use of social network is typical of the younger users, the so called digital native (or Net Generation or the Millennials), the cohort of young adults who have grown up with personal computers, cell phones and the internet (Bennet et al, 2008, Prensky, 2005). But these individuals constantly connected — always in touch — anytime, anyplace are not the only subscriber to the social network sites. Indeed, even if as some research highlights (Pew Internet, 2003) the digital divide still separates younger from not so young people, recent data underline that the age of social networks users is increasing. The aim of the paper is to discover if among Italian social networks’ users it is possible to outline different ways to use the social networks according to the different age of subscribers. Indeed, the work aims to check whether the following variables can identify different groups of users: a. different levels of technological skills (i.e. being or not a digital native); b. different ways to access the Internet (occasional access versus always connected modality of fruition); c. different motivations that drive people to open an account on a social network (i. e. searching for old school-mates or contact the girl of yesterday’s evening). The explorative research has been conducted on quantitative data collected through a participative research on social networks promoted by an Italian research company SWG (DiarioAperto 2009).