Abstracts Category : Other

Morning Shows the Day: Leading Indicators of Pioneer Downloaders of Social Media Applications

by Sickle Lauren Van

thesis aimed to understand which types of demographic and personality characteristics were prevalent among early downloaders of social media applications. I began my research by creating a survey that contained 24 questions pertaining to demographics, personality traits, and application downloads. Specifically, these questions asked respondents where they grew up, how many siblings they had, what year they were in college and what major they studied. The survey also asked for the month and year each respondent downloaded six different social media applications. Lastly, the survey contained a personality test. After analyzing the survey responses, I was able to determine which personality traits and demographic traits were linked to high and low speeds of adoption. The key findings from my research were the associations between adoption speed and the traits I collected data on. The lowest speed of adoption was associated with being the youngest child in a family, a major in engineering, and personality types of agreeableness or neuroticism. On the other hand, I found that those with a high number of Facebook friends and those who attended private school growing up tended to have a fast speed of adoption. Through my analysis, I was able to conclude that certain personality traits and demographic factors could affect the speed of adoption of social media applications. ( en )