Abstract:

With 2.19 billion users, Facebook is one of the most famous and prosperous social network services (SNS). Because of its pervasiveness and especially concerning the recent issue on the collection of personal data of both users and non-users, some experts and psychologists believe that users are influenced to behave in certain ways vastly different from their usual behaviour. The present study provided insight into why students adopt a characteristic or identity in this online setting via a thorough examination of the student's level of participation on Facebook. The descriptive research design was employed for the study. The sample size used was 240 drawn from the first and third-year undergraduate students of the University of Ghana (UG). Purposive sampling technique was adopted for sample selection. The main research instrument for the study was a questionnaire. The study revealed that most of the students were digitally inclined and is very active on Facebook. It was also seen that due to the visual possibilities of Facebook, students tailored their characteristics or identity towards wanting their audience to like them, to be desired by their girlfriend and sought after by popular users. It was also discovered that unlike anonymous media such as chat room, users can be held accountable for deviant behaviour on the Facebook environment because pertinent information about them are kept and shared with third parties.

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