The work, conducted by Fawziya Al-Harbi, a researcher with a master's degree in media from Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, said the number of Facebook users in the Kingdom had tripled over the past few years, and almost half of the users were young men and women under 25 years of age.
The study said 59 percent of the secondary school girls in the Kingdom use Facebook to communicate with their friends, colleagues, relatives and teachers. It pointed out that 62 percent of the girls use Facebook to hold discussions with their friends, 44 percent of them use it for personal contacts with their colleagues from the same school and only 2 percent use the media tool for communications with their teachers. Al-Harbi said Saudi women use Facebook for a variety of reasons including buying and selling things online, writing notes and memoirs, maintaining old friendships and getting acquainted with new ones.
She said 32 percent of the girls use their real names, while 68 percent of them do not reveal the names of their families, and some of them use their original photos while others use various expressive drawings. According to the study, about 70 percent of the girls go online in the evenings; 47 percent of them usually do that after 11 p.m.
Regarding the types of use, the study said 62 percent of the girls use the Internet to read or write e-mail messages, 54 percent to browse popular sites, and 52.5 percent to use the social media tools.
It said with only nine percent of the girls using them, sport and news sites were the least visited. The girls’ favorite sites were those of songs and movie films, chatting and magazines.
The researcher said 78 percent of the girls go online through iPhones, 76 percent through the iPad, 61 percent through personal or office computers and 46 percent through BlackBerries, while only 14 percent of them browse the Internet on their laptops.
She said about 65 percent of the secondary school girls she talked to in Riyadh told her that they had their own accounts that were not shared by the other family members, 13 percent said they shared the computers with others, while 62 percent said they used their computers in their own private rooms.
The study said 47 percent of the girls were not being watched during their use of the computer while 10 percent said their families kept a close watch on them.
