The study was undertaken as a qualitative case study to reveal the effects of social networking on
social life of undergraduate students. The Facebook use of undergraduate students (teacher
candidates) was selected as the case. The Facebook was chosen as the case because clearly, it is the
most popular social network these days.
The Facebook offers several options for communicating with others. Users can create their own
profiles, a personalized web page which often includes a photograph of the member and personal
information describing his or her interests, can view one another’s profiles, share text, audio, and
visuals, and can communicate through various applications similar to email or message boards. The
Facebook users can control who can and cannot view their postings and personal information by
editing their privacy settings. Generally, in order to be able to share information, users must be
Facebook friends or members of a group. Friendship starts on invitation. An individual who is
invited may either accept or reject the offer, thus providing individual control over one's list of
friends.
The participants of the study were 24 teacher candidates (6 males and 18 females) studying in the
Erciyes University Faculty of Education. The Erciyes University is located in Kayseri, a middle sized
city in central Turkey. The Faculty of Education has around 3000 students (70% females, 30% males)
studying in 9 departments. The students are generally from middle and low socio-economic class.