Online Consumption

By YuWen Lai and MeiFong Er

Do you ever count how many hours you ‘stay’ online in a day?

Today, what we have to admit is the online consumption continues to increase due to the rapid grow of mobiles devices and the fast development of Apps with many more people now have a Smartphone in their hand. The most dramatic change for the online consumption’s pattern in this few years is the accessibility of the network and the high popularity gained by social networking sites. 

In the old days, most of us is using computer to online and the accessibility of internet is quite limited. However, what we can see in today is people are able to online wherever they are by using Smartphone. They can even update a post in a social network when they are walking or ‘check-in’ where they are or what they are eating in the social network whenever they feel like to do so. This is so much different with we have to bring along a laptop which is quite heavy in order to access internet. Everything seem like is done with a touch on the screen of the Smartphone.

Facebook is still being one of the popular social networks for nowadays even it has been used by people for the last 10 years. In our view, we think Facebook plays a big part in the online consumption of most of the people specially teenagers and students. Therefore, we are interested to come out a few questions about the consumption’s patterns of Facebook in order to gain insight the role of Facebook played in the part of online consumption among university students.

  

1. Do you have Facebook account?

a.      Yes
b.      No

 
2. Do you have a Twitter account?
a.      Yes
b.      No
 
3. How often do you spend on surfing Facebook in a day
a.     every 30 minutes
b.     every 1hour
c.     1 - 3 hours
d.     3 – 6 hours
e.     More than 6 hours

4.      How often do you spend to view other peoples’ profile or posts
a.      Less than 30 minutes
b.      30 minutes – 1 hour
c.       1 – 3 hours
d.      More than 3 hours
 
5.     What is your favorite activity in Facebook
a.      Games
b.      Update status
c.       Upload photo
d.      For the purpose of learning (eg: group discussion)
e.      Get the latest news
f.        Look for entertainment. ( eg: look for funny shared video or article)
g.      View others peoples’ status or photos (eg: stalk people all the way)
 
6.      What device you often use to surf Facebook
a.      Smartphone
b.      Computer
 
7.      Do you think Facebook is influencing your life?
a.      Yes
b.      No
 
8.      Do you think Surfing Facebook is a waste of time?
a.      Yes
b.      No
 
9.      Do you use Facebook to find a partner or hope to start a love relationship by using Facebook to establish the relationship with other Facebook’s user?
a.      Yes
b.      No
 
10.  How long can you not to surf the Facebook? ( under a condition of the network is available)
a.      less than 1 hour
b.      1- 3 hours
c.       12 hours- 24 hours
d.      1-3 days
e.      More than 3 days

The questions had been distributed to 10 communication studies students and it shown that none of the students without a Facebook account but only three of them possess a Twitter account (It seems like the popularization rate of Twitter not as popular as Facebook among Comm students). 

From the cumulative time on 10 respondents spend on surfing Facebook in a day; we get a range of mean time 2-5 hours. In the meantime, they spend around 1-3 hours to view other peoples’ profile or posts. Do not get shock of the data; we actually having a quarter of day in surfing Facebook, one third of day in sleeping time, left 10 hours for other activities. All of the activities as the question mentioned have involved as the frequent activities in Facebook. However, the games had the least involvement compared to other activities perhaps users seek for more challenge online games. 

Smartphone and computer are both devices students use to surf Facebook. Besides that, 1 out of 10 respondents is using a portable tab to surf web. Indeed, I personally prefer much bigger screen to scroll down the information. Anyway, I don’t need to zoom in whenever I am reading a text or document.  So, how do you think surfing Facebook is a waste of time? It depends on users whether they treat it as information tool or just to kill time.  

Today’s media audience is capable of anytime, anywhere online consumption and, in turn, requires advance, on-demand content. Facebook is just one of the social networking sites to meet the users’ dependency on media. However we can’t deny even Facebook turns 10; it is still holding the world’s largest social network in numbers. Trend is going to fade out in someday. 

Would you still be with Facebook after another 10 years?