RESULTS
Descriptive statistics
Adolescents visited the friend networking site on
average three days a week (M = 3.09, SD = 2.07).
When they visited the website, they stayed on the
site for approximately a half hour. The average
number of reactions that adolescents had received
on their profiles was 25.31 (SD = 50.00), with a
range from 0 to 350 reactions. The tone of the reactions
varied significantly among adolescents. Of
the adolescent who reported having received reactions
to their profiles (n = 592), 5.6% indicated that
these reactions had always been negative; 1.6%
that they had predominantly been negative; 10.1%
that they had sometimes been negative and sometimes
positive; 49.3% that they had been predominantly
positive; and 28.4% that they had always
been positive. Thirty-five percent of the adolescents
reported having established a friendship, and
8.4% reported having formed a romantic relationship
through the friend networking site.
Zero-order correlations
Before testing our hypothesized model, we present
a matrix showing the Pearson product-moment
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correlations between the variables included in the
model (Table 1).
Testing the hypothesized model
The variables in our model were all modeled as
latent constructs. The construct reflecting the use of
the friend networking site was measured by three
items and well-being by five items. The frequency
of reactions to profiles, the tone of the reactions to
profiles, and the number of relationships established
by the site were each measured by two
items. The latent construct social self-esteem was
formed by the three subscales measuring physical
appearance self-esteem, close friendship selfesteem,
and romantic appeal self-esteem. For reasons
of clarity, we do not present the measurement
model (i.e., the factor-analytic models) in our
graphical presentation of the results. However, all
factor-analytic models led to adequate descriptions
of the data. The factor loadings were all above 0.44.