People using Facebook don't realise they're on the internet

Potentially millions of Facebook users don't realise they are on the internet when they use the site.

New research by the website Quartz goes some way to confirming a three-year-old study that showed people in south-east Asia were more likely to claim to be Facebook-users than internet-users.

That research from Helani Galpaya in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Burma, saw her then boss at the LIRNEasia thinktank remark: "It seemed that in their minds, the internet did not exist; only Facebook."

Quartz tried to replicate the phenomenon of Facebook members in emerging market countries not associating the site with the internet by commissioning surveys in Nigeria and Indonesia.

The research suggested 11 per cent of Indonesians and nine per cent of Nigerians say they are active on Facebook, but don't use the internet.

Facebook, which has 1.4billion members, has committed itself to extending internet access to the around 60 per cent of the world's population currently cut off.

But does the disassociation of the internet and Facebook in some people's minds mean that in the future, governments and companies will have to reach out via one site rather, and play by their rules, rather than use the open web?

Source: Quartz

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