The present research is a ‘snap shot’ of Facebook users, and
further work should consider the possibility of researching
the development of use over time. In particular, it would be
of interest to see how people’s uses and gratifications of
Facebook develop, and if the frequency of visit is motivated
by ‘perpetual contact’ over time. There is, for instance,
considerable research in the field of habit formation that
could inform the study of social network site use. HCI
research should also consider ways in which the desire to
meet new people, and to allow oneself to be viewed by
strangers, can be accommodated in a privacy-protecting
manner [14]. At present, Facebook has reasonably nuanced
privacy controls. From the results of the present research, it
would seem that users are changing the default privacy
settings in a motivated manner. However, the present study
only collected reported privacy settings. It would be
prudent to complete research that actually examined
settings via automated querying of the site [e.g. 13], or by
studying a corpus of actual interactions [e.g. 11].