Most of the informants (95%) in this study are active
OSN subscribers, having three or more accounts, except for
one teacher and a student. As one student describes, “just
about everyone you know happens to be there.” The subjects
characterize three generations of Internet users: the students,
ages 18-25 represent the digital natives or generation Y; the
teachers, ages 28-37 represent the mediagenic generation X;
and the parents, ages 40-55 represent an earlier generation.
With access to Internet and having college education
experience, the informants are qualified and credible
subjects to construct portraiture of how OSNs can be
optimized in instruction. They are members of virtual
communities and are possibly in each other’s networks of
friends. They got into OSNs for several reasons, but for most
of them it was out of curiosity: “I was just so curious,
because everybody is talking about it. So, I tried and am
really having fun in it”.