Table 1.

Characteristics of social media platforms assessed in the current study

Platform	Popularitya	Privacy	Key features and characteristics
Facebook	Low	Low: User profiles are searchable by first and last name, although profile content can be set to private.	Post types include text-based status updates, photos, videos, and web/news links. Users can like, comment, or share friends’ posts. In recent years, this platform has become increasing popular among adults (including parents, family, employers) and less popular among college students.
Twitter	Low	High: Profile can be tied to any username/handle rather than real name; accounts can easily be set to private.	Tweets are character text-based status updates; web links, memes, short videos, and gifs often accompany text. Observers can favorite, retweet, or comment on peers’ tweets.
Instagram	High	High: Profile can be tied to any username/handle rather than real name; accounts can easily be set to private.	Image and video-based posts; rich set of photo editing and beautification filters; permanent images and videos posted by users appear in followers’ newsfeeds as determined by algorithm; more recently, ephemeral stories that disappear after 24 hours viewable by all followers or select followers (“close friends”).
Snapchat	High	High: Profile tied to any username/handle rather than real name; accounts can easily be set to private.	Direct user-to-user ephemeral image/video-based snaps disappear after a single view; ephemeral multi-snap stories viewable by followers and other users for 24 hours before disappearing; fun augmented reality filters can be added to snaps; university-geolocation filters allow college students to view a campus story comprising snaps taken by fellow students.

^aPopularity designations based on Perrin and Anderson (2019).