Tired of hearing all of your friends spout off on Facebook and Twitter? Here’s a consolation: If they weren’t on Facebook and Twitter, they would talk a lot more.
That’s the surprising conclusion from new research that argues that social media users are less likely to talk about controversial issues online than in the real world.
Just as surprising: People who use Facebook and Twitter are less likely to talk about hot-button issues in public than people who don’t use social media.
All of this comes from a provocative report from Pew Research Center, which tracked the way people talked about the Edward Snowden/NSA story that broke last year.
via Why Social Media Makes You Less Chatty Than You Think | Re/code.