Facebook News Feed: Relevance or Noise?

Facebook, with over 800 million active users, is one of the most successful social networking sites. It offers the quick exchange of data among geographically dispersed users to help them build and maintain social relationships. However, with the recent changes to its News Feed, Facebook has inundated users with information. Many users are bewildered and are unable to filter out irrelevant information. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent of information overload experienced by Facebook users. Additionally, this study explores the factors associated with information overload on Facebook users. Results reveal that females experience more Facebook information overload than males. Furthermore, it was found that frequent visitors to Facebook are subject to more irrelevant information and are confronted with excessive information. These findings have implications for the design of user interfaces that could address perceptions of information overload on the Facebook News Feed.