The Fleet Reserve Association (FRA) recently surveyed current and former service members to determine how social media impacts their personal and professional lives. Active duty, Reserve, retired and veteran members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard shared their views on the growing trend of social networking through Internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Since the Department of Defense (DoD) made social networking sites (SNS) more accessible for military personnel, there have been mixed reviews on the February 2010 policy memo. Despite DoD’s call to implement the policy immediately, only half of active duty and Reserve respondents said they could access SNS from their military work stations. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents currently serving said their command or unit had an official social media presence, while all indicated they were not comfortable or tempered their views when communicating through command-sponsored channels. The majority of active duty and Reserve respondents cited staying in touch with family and friends as the primary reason they log in to social networking sites, with Facebook being the platform of choice. All said they read and/or post to military-related blogs to get useful and factual information and to hear what their peers are saying on topics pertinent to their service.

Military retirees and veterans responding to the survey also chose Facebook as their preferred social networking site. Forty-one percent of the retired and veteran respondents read and/or post to military blogs, with the majority saying they visit these sites primarily to get pertinent information.

FRA shares data from this and its other quarterly surveys with legislators and military leaders to help them understand the impact their decisions have on service personnel and their families.  Visit www.fra.org/survey to participate in FRA’s current survey on the use of online colleges and universities.