Digital skills and social media use: how Internet skills are related to different types of Facebook use among ‘digital natives’

ABSTRACT

Based on the idea that Internet use can be conceptualized in terms of depth (frequency) and width (differentiated) uses of the Web, this study explored how socio-demographic factors and digital skills are related to frequency and types of Facebook use among young adults. It used a face-to-face representative survey conducted in the three main urban areas of Chile among a sample of 18-to 29-year olds. The results found that men and more educated young people had higher levels of skills, confirming that the so-called ‘digital natives’ are not a monolithic group. They also revealed that digital skills did not predict frequency of Facebook use. Furthermore, lower educated young people tended to use Facebook more frequently. Although these results go against the long-established digital divide research, traditional digital gaps emerged when types of use were analyzed. While more educated and skillful individuals tended to use Facebook for informational and mobilizing purposes, socio-demographic factors and skills did not make a difference in Facebook use for social purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital skills
• social media
• Facebook
• digital inequality
• digital divide
• young people
• survey
• digital natives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Teresa Correa (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is assistant professor in the College of Communication and Literature at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. Her research focuses on access and use of digital technologies. Her studies have been published in the Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication; New Media and Society; Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media; Information, Communication, and Society; Computers in Human Behavior; Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly; Journalism and International Communication Gazette, among others. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. Income, measured as material possessions of the household, was not included in the analyses because of its high correlation with education.

2. The scores of most of the variables were normally distributed. Only two showed higher levels of skewness: Frequency of Facebook use (3.2) and Social use of Facebook (−2.6). To test whether this skewed distribution affected the statistical analyses, a log and a reflected log transformation were performed, respectively. However, the regression results did not change after the transformations. Thus, they were maintained to ease the interpretations of the results.