Nürtingen

The network is as popular in India as it is Germany – Expert offers tips for young users and their parents.

Chatting, meeting people, inadvertently inviting 7,500 birthday guests, or finding out what’s on at clubs – if you want to be up to date, there is basically no way around Facebook. What’s good about Facebook? What isn’t? Are there common approaches? A comparison between Germany and India.

Lennart and Patrick are 14 and 15 years old, which puts them in the typical age group of Facebook users. For them, a chat on the social network is what used to be a phone call for their parents who spent hours on the telephone in their teenage years. Hobbies, music, school, girls, or “the situation at home” – the boys will post anything that is important to them, gets on their nerves, or makes them laugh, sharing it with a number of other friends. Lennart now has 250. “I know them all personally, too,” he says. But he doesn’t share all information with all of them. There are no questionable pictures on Lennart’s profile. Some of his friends are not as guarded.

In Germany there are more than 23 million registered Facebook users, corresponding to roughly 28 percent of the population. The land of poets and thinkers hence ranks tenth among social network users. Germany performs rather poorly in comparison with India, considering that the subcontinent ranks second in the worldwide Facebook statistics. However, the 46 million users from India form only roughly four percent of the population. It is the group of 18 to 34-year olds who use Facebook most frequently both in Germany and in India. In Germany, the ratio of males to females, at 52 to 48 percent, is well balanced, while in India young men, at 73 percent, dominate the users of this medium.

Facebook as an information portal

“The basic idea of Facebook is to connect people. And it works,” Simone Haug from the Institute for Knowledge Media in Tübingen (Germany) confirms the statements by Patrick and Lennart. She adds that Facebook is also an information portal to find out about upcoming events or the latest from one’s soccer club. “This is a problem for teenagers who don’t use Facebook, because they are excluded from the information cycle,” says Haug. That means if you want to belong to a certain community you need to be a Facebook user. For instance, many universities use only Facebook to post information to first semester students. Students who used to meet at cafés to analyze texts now join virtual study groups. “Lately, teachers have also been finding out that information posted on Facebook reaches their students more quickly,” Haug adds, laughing.

And Facebook is the gold standard. This network is continually gaining ground, while its competitors have to deal with decreasing user numbers.

In India, too, Facebook is important for keeping in touch with friends. And it has been increasingly observed that news, such as the recent earthquake in the Indian Ocean, spread more quickly via Facebook than on the normal news. 18-year-old Briyankar from Kolkata admits that he is downright addicted to Facebook. He spends up to three hours on the network every day, on weekends usually even more. “This addiction is a major problem of our generation. I wanted to limit my time on Facebook, but I didn’t manage it,” says Briyankar. The network keeps him from sleeping and has a negative impact on his studies. The situation was not quite as serious for Amélie (26) from Bempflingen, but she, too, used to have Facebook opened in the background almost constantly while working on papers on her computer. However, her urge to be up to date all the time has lessened. “Today I spend maybe half an hour per day on Facebook,” she estimates.

Teenagers are frequently unaware of the fact that Facebook is a vast data storage medium. Users have no control of what happens with their data. The contents are analyzed, providing insight into the behaviour of users on the Internet. Facebook does not clearly reveal what happens with the information acquired. “People who accept Facebook’s General Terms & Conditions – and this is necessary to register – waive their rights to posted pictures, for example,” warns Simone Haug.

Without a doubt, a deleted picture may continue to wander around the net. Once shared with friends, the person who originally uploaded it no longer has control over the picture, cannot decide in what context it may be shown. “Therefore, you should think twice about what pictures to upload,” warns Haug. However, she has also found that data privacy is a growing concern for young people. Eighty percent select their “privacy” settings to allow only friends access to their profile.

Amélie also has a story to tell about posting pictures. Initially she uploaded many pictures of herself, also to attract boys. But when her sister began to apply for a job and found out that potential employers search the net for information about the applicant, Amélie and her sister decided to proceed with more caution.

Facebook as a data storage medium, which for instance also sends customized advertisements, is an aspect viewed rather critically in Germany, but is very popular in India. “When a popular sports shoe company announces a sale, this attracts teenagers especially. They use this type of information,” says Suruchi, a 24-year old Indian journalist. She is very critical of religious hate sites that are directed for instance against Islam. “This may lead to riots in the street,” she says. Suruchi mainly uses Facebook to keep in touch with friends, including those from her days back at school.

Users need to be at least 13 to register with the largest of all social networks. However, Facebook does not verify the age indicated at registration. So what can you do if your under-13-year-old wants to use the network no matter what? “You shouldn’t forbid them to join. They’ll be frustrated and do it secretly,” says Haug, recommending that parents create a profile together with their children, explaining the profile settings that are important. “Teenagers and sometimes even young adults don’t have an exact idea of what pieces of information are sensitive,” says Simone Haug.

This is another role taken on by the network. It gives teenagers the opportunity to play with their identity. “You can give yourself a profile that may show yourself how you would like to be rather than who you really are. However, children should be given such room to move. Image cultivation is important for young people,” explains Haug. Amélie agrees. A few years back, she did the personality test on Facebook. “I actually kept on clicking until the result was Angelina Jolie,” she says and laughs about herself today. But back then she wanted to convey this image of herself to others.

Playing with your identity

Playing with your identity, your profile, of course is an important aspect in India, too, even if in a slightly different way. The number of friends you have indicates how popular you are. Are there movie stars among your friends? What do your friends wear? This all contributes to your status, Suruchi says. She also relates that cybermobbing has been on the increase. Users hack into the Facebook account of a school friend or a friend, using their names and Facebook sites to spread rumours about others, causing clashes among several people at once by spreading false information and perhaps even bringing them into disrepute at the same time.

Expert Simone Haug sees no problem in parents registering as friends on their children’s Facebook site as long as this is accepted by the children. “And you can select custom settings for friends so that not every ‘friend’ can see everything. Whenever children are under the impression that their parents want to check up on them on Facebook they will find ways to do something to counteract that,” she is certain. In India, however, most parents do not follow their children’s Facebook activities. Yet, if teenagers make conspicuous postings on Facebook, their parents are summoned to a meeting with the school principal, also attended by a police officer and a representative of the youth welfare office. Still, parents are much more concerned when network activities tarnish the reputation of their family names.

Germany and India – the comparison has shown that there are not all too many differences when it comes to Facebook activities of young people. And the young people have similar needs to communicate and express themselves. Is it the next step into a world that is growing closer together?