A new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project focusing on the web habits of 12- to 17-year-olds provides some of the first independent numbers on social networking for that age group.
It found that older girls, in particular, are the most likely to have used social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook. Social networking sites like these two allow users to create profiles, swap messages and share photos and video clips, with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.
The survey of 935 U.S. youth, ages 12 to 17, was done by telephone in October and November. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. The Pew survey was released today. It found that 70 percent of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, had profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57 percent of boys in that age bracket.
The numbers remained much the same across racial and economic lines.
“Most teens realize how much of social life is happening in these networks � and that’s something they often want to be a part of,” says Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew.
According to the survey the top three social networking or Web 2.0 sites were MySpace, used by 85 percent of the survey population, Facebook was far behind, used by 7 percent and 1 percent were on Xanga.
Lenhart and her colleagues found that 55 percent of children 12-17 claimed to use social networking sites. They also found that the survey skews older within this age range. Only a little over a third of 12- and 13-year-olds say have a profile on any site.
University of Southern California researcher Danah Boyd contends that the Pew survey jibes with her own field research. “Our brains are attuned to social data. We love gossip. We love details about one another,” Boyd says. “In the process, we build friendships.”
Meanwhile, the survey found that older boys who use social networking were more than twice as likely as older girls to say they use the sites to flirt � 29 percent of older boys, compared with 13 percent of older girls. According to experts this finding is consistent with face-to-face interaction of boys to girls in that age group.
In a striking blow for common sense, the survey reveals that two-thirds of teens who’ve created profiles only allowed friends they approved of to access their profiles. And most teens knew the difference between a public and private profile.
Still, not everyone is convinced that the social networking trend is a good one.
“Each year, incoming students are more distracted than ever,” says Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State University’s journalism school and author of the book “Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age.”
“These data from the Pew survey verify what we already know � that the situation will get worse before it improves.”
Pew researchers say they will release more survey data on issues of privacy and security in the months to come.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. To review the survey in its entirety, please click here.
