Facebook 10-years later ..... watch those TMIs and who cares what you had for breakfast eh?

Facebook users strongly dislike TMI posts: survey

Friends love when you post photos, but not ones of their kids

Emily Chung
Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Could you be annoying your Facebook friends?

Maybe, if you post photos of your friends' kids without permission, or if you share "too much information" about yourself, according to a survey released by Pew Research Centre ahead of Facebook's 10th anniversary Tuesday.

Among Facebook users with children, 57 per cent say people posting pictures of their children without their permission is something they "strongly dislike" about those who use the popular social networking service.
The telephone survey of 960 adult Facebook users, drawn from a sample of 1,801, people was conducted last August to September by Princeton Survey Research Associates. The margin of error is calculated to be plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Other things that Facebook users strongly dislike are:

• People sharing too much information about themselves (36 per cent)

• Others posting pictures of you or things about you without asking permission (36 per cent)

• Other people seeing posts or comments you didn't mean for them to see (27 per cent).

A smaller percentage of users said they strongly disliked certain kinds of social pressure on FB  — like being pressured to share too much, to post content that will generate comments and to comment on things posted by others.

In the case of users who post "too much" information, Aaron Smith, a Senior Researcher with the Pew Centre said it wasn't clear whether it was the type of information posted or the frequency of posting that bothered their friends, but he suggested it was likely some combination.

A previous survey had found that about a fifth of users had either "unfriended" or blocked posts from at least one of their Facebook friends because of politically related posts.

Posts about social activities don't annoy

Smith said he was most surprised that very few people — only five per cent —  were annoyed by posts about social activities they weren't included in, given that there has been a lot of discussion about that phenomenon in the press.

Women and men tended to like Facebook for similar reasons, although women were more likely to cite the reasons as being "major."

• The top reason cited by women for using Facebook was to see photos or videos, listed by 54 per cent (39 per cent of men)

• The top reason cited by men was the ability to share with many people at once, listed by 42 per cent (50 per cent of women)

• Men and women were equally interested in using Facebook to receive updates and comments on what's going on in the news

• Another big difference was that women say an important reason for using Facebook was to receive support from others in their network (29 per cent, compared to 16 per cent of men)

Showing "too much" information is annoying but user's aren't bothered by posts about social activities they weren't included in.

 Overall, the survey found that adults are using Facebook more — roughly 57 per cent of U.S. adults use the service and, of those, 64 per cent use it daily, up from 51 per cent in 2010.

Some of the other findings of the survey were that:

• The average Facebook user has 338 friends and the median number of friends was 200

• 44 per cent of users "like" content and 31 per cent comment on photos posted by their friends at least once a day

• Only 10 per cent change their status daily and 25 per cent say they never change or update their status

• 12 per cent of Facebook users have been asked by a friend (35 per cent) or current (23 per cent) or former (12 per cent) spouse or romantic partner to unfriend someone else. This was especially prevalent among users under 30.