Reasons for Facebook Usage: Data From 46 Countries

Summary

This large cross-cultural collaboration mapped why people use Facebook, drawing on responses from participants across 46 countries. Rather than treating social media use as a single undifferentiated behaviour, the authors distinguished multiple motives for logging on and compared their prevalence across nations. They examined how these reasons for use related to demographic and cultural characteristics of respondents. The study documented the most common motivations worldwide while highlighting both shared patterns and cross-country variation in Facebook use. The resulting dataset offers a broad, internationally sampled picture of the motivations behind social media use.