Depending on the gender of the target audience, the choice of social networks also depends. Women prefer social networks more, where visual content prevails, while men are more interested in textual resources. Studies show that men use the Internet and social networks in particular to search for information, while women communicate more. Lin and Wang (2020) discovered that for women, privacy concerns, social relationships, and commitment were more critical than for males in forming attitudes toward information sharing.
Men discuss common topics on social networks, for example, politics, while women use networks to discuss personal issues, such as family, children, and relationships. Women’s topics get more likes, men’s – more comments. However, this does not mean that women are not interested in general topics. One of the reasons for their “restraint” is negative feedback (Chetty & Alathur, 2018). Thus, women get more offensive comments by expressing their opinions.
Various studies on the visibility settings of profiles in social networks show that the desire for privacy is not related to age but, at the same time, depends on gender. Thus, it is worth noting that more than half of women have a profile visible only to friends, compared with about 40% of men (Frener & Trepte, 2022). Only a limited number of users have fully public profiles. In addition, it is worth noting the fact that the number of people who delete unwanted comments, photos, and friends from their profiles has increased.
Modern mass media convey and consolidate social standards of beauty in relation to the body. However, because of their unreality, these ideals are unattainable for most people. This discrepancy generates dissatisfaction with appearance, increases the number of eating disorders, and increases the popularity of changing appearance with the help of plastic surgery and diets (Tamplin et al., 2018). The problem is that such an ideal image is often shown to women, however, men also face similar problems.
References
Chetty, N., & Alathur, S. (2018). Hate speech review in the context of online social networks.Aggression and Violent Behavior, 40, 108–118. Web.
Frener, R., & Trepte, S. (2022). Theorizing gender in online privacy research.Journal of Media Psychology, 34(2), 77–88. Web.
Lin, X., & Wang, X. (2020). Examining gender differences in people’s information-sharing decisions on social networking sites. International Journal of Information Management, 50, 45–56. Web.
Tamplin, N. C., McLean, S. A., & Paxton, S. J. (2018). Social media literacy protects against the negative impact of exposure to appearance ideal social media images in young adult women but not men.Body Image, 26, 29–37. Web.