The social networking site Facebook has become an inescapable phenomenon for college students, but little systematic research has studied why these students use Facebook. I conducted an online survey among Facebook users at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (N=1,049) to examine why they use Facebook and how it fulfills their needs. The most prevalent use of Facebook was as a social activity – students reported using Facebook with friends to view and discuss other people’s profiles. Essentially, Facebook appears to operate primarily as a tool for the facilitation of gossip.
