A study published in Individual Differences Research in 2010 has found some differences between the reasons college-aged men and women provide for using Myspace and Facebook.
The study was conducted by Jennifer Bonds-Raacke and John Raacke from the University of North Carolina and surveyed 201 freshman college students.
Of the 201 college students surveyed, 175 or about 87% of them reported having either a Myspace or a Facebook account. Facebook appears to have been the most popular social networking site for these students, with the majority of the students having a Facebook profile and 70% having both a Myspace profile and a Facebook profile.
On average, those surveyed reported spending two hours a day on either Facebook or Myspace. They also reported logging on to their social networking account an average of four times a day.
The study found that men were more likely than women to report using social networking sites for dating and were also more likely to reporting using such sites to share information about themselves.
In addition, less men reported setting their profile to private than woman and men also tended to have more friends linked to their profile than women did.
Reference:
Raacke-Bond, J. & Raacke, J. (2010). Myspace and facebook: identifying dimensions of uses and gratifications for friend networking sites. Individual Differences Research, Vol. 8, No. 1: 27-33.