AN APPLICATION ON THE USE OF FACEBOOK BY GENERATION Z IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL NETWORK AS A MEANS OF VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

According to data from 2018, 3.19 billion people, which is 42% of world population have socialmedia accounts. With the virtual communication carried out on a global scale, a virtual cultureand environment arises between individuals and societies; people living in different conditionsand cultures get closer and a cultural change takes place. Moreover, a research conducted in 26countries by Reuters Institute of Oxford University in 2016 to learn about people's news sourcesrevealed that 51% of the participants used social media to get weekly news. This rate is 73% forTurkey. The number of users in Facebook, which can be accessed through 19 language optionstoday and expressed as the world's largest social network, is close to 2 billion. The purpose of thisstudy which is structured upon these phenomena is to approach social networks as one of thevirtual communication tools and to determine the usage preferences of generation Z, who wereborn in the years 1995-2012. The universe of the study consists of university students living inTurkey, born in and after 1995, which is considered the first year of Generation Z. The sample is364 students of Kocaeli University Kandıra Vocational School of Higher Education. Survey methodis used in the research. The conclusion reveals that the 29% of generation Z members do not useFacebook and the 10% do not have an active Facebook account. Those who use Facebookactively stated that they predominantly prefer following the humor pages, that they don’t use itfor playing games or listening to music, that they prefer in person communication rather thancommunicating via Facebook, that they do not refrain expressing their true feelings and thoughtsthrough posts and comments, that they are not interested in advertisements in the pages andthere are not affected by them, and that they are disturbed by fake accounts, attempts of fraud,harassments, voyeurisms, and by those who use their personal accounts for commercialpurposes.