Young people's socialization and identity construction processes in social network sites: The case of Facebook

This study aims to reveal how young people aged 15-24 in Eskişehir use Facebook and to examine their methods of socialization on the net and their identity building processes. The study was designed as mixed research involving both qualitative and quantitative data collection technics. In this way, between the months of August and October of 2013, 402 young people was conducted. Moreover 6 face to face and 3 online semi-structured interviews have been conducted and Facebook profiles of eight young people from this interviewed group have been analysed. Quantitative data were analyzed by Frequency, Chi-square, Mann-Whitney's U test and Spearman's correlation. Findings have shown that new media tools becoming smaller play an important role in the change of ordinary practices of socialization. Besides, it has been found out that certain types of facebook usage vary across gender and age. For example, male Facebook users which regard Facebook as a way of meeting new people are more than female users and the number of users aged 15-19 is greater than the number of users aged 20-24. Male users and lower age groups are more likely to share their private information like relationship status, "who you are interested in", e-mail, phone number and address information etc. Also the number of friends on Facebook seems to be an important sign of identity for lower age groups. Therefore, it can said that differences in age and gender are crucial in the processes of identity building and socialization. Moreover, Facebook like patterns give away important details about cultural capital and socio-demographic features of an individual. Keywords: Social Network Sites, Socialization, Identity Construction.