Facebook key to campus identity, but also a distraction

18% of Facebook users and 15% of MySpace users spent 11 to 12 hours per week, almost two to three hours per day, on SNS.

"We used to say 'you're watching too much TV,'" Brewer says. "Now we'll be warning about social networking."

This already seems to be a concern to some users themselves. Among the students who added comments to their survey, the word "distraction" or some variant was repeatedly used. "You can chat for hours," one wrote.

The value of SNS to these first-year students seems to be in part in anchoring them to established relationships as they explore new ones on the campus. Overall, 84% of respondents said the social networking sites were most important for connecting with classmates from high school; 79% for connecting with "friends I don't see regularly." Family members and "ASU classmates I see" got about the same rating: about 44% of respondents said SNS were important for these connections.

But the sites did play a dramatic role in one crucial new relationship: roommates. Over three-quarters of respondents used SNS to make first contact with their assigned roommate, some as early as last May, many as early as June. The sites also played a role in expanding on-campus relationships: 68% of Facebook users, but only 35% of MySpace users, said they joined an SNS group for their residence hall, a third of them in June and July.

And students said the sites improved their nonacademic campus life: 70% of Facebook users and 44% of MySpace users said this was the case. But the percentages were far lower for "academic life": 37% of Facebook users and 15% of MySpace users said the sites improved learning. But students do use their networks as informal, ad hoc study groups, to find out what they miss if they can't attend a class and to ask homework or assignment questions.