Survey reveals teens’ experiences on social networking sites

Photo: Pew Internet

Social media use has become so pervasive in the lives of American teens that having a presence on a social network site is almost synonymous with being online.

Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites. Many log on daily to their social network pages and these have become spaces where much of the social activity of teen life is echoed and amplified—in both good and bad ways

The findings are detailed in a new report called “Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites: How American teens navigate the new world of ‘digital citizenship,’” from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Sections include:

• Part 1 » Teens and social networks
• Part 2 » Social media and digital citizenship: What teens experience and how they behave on social network sites
• Part 3 » Privacy and safety issues
• Part 4 » The role of parents in digital safekeeping and advice-giving
• Part 5 » Parents and online social spaces: Tech tool ownership and attitudes towards social media

About the Survey
The data discussed in this report are the result of a three-part, multi-modal study that included interviews with experts, seven focus groups with middle and high school students, and a nationally representative random-digit-dial telephone survey of teens and parents. The survey was fielded April 19 through July 14, 2011, and was administered by landline and cell phone, in English and Spanish, to 799 teens ages 12-17 and a parent or guardian. Black and Latino families were oversampled. The margin of error for the full sample is ±5 percentage points. The margin of error for the 623 teen social network site users is ±6 percentage points.
More information is available in the methodology section.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project