New Study on Teens, Social Media & Privacy

On May 21st, the Pew Research Center released a study titled "Teens, Social Media, and Privacy." The group had surveyed 802 teens about their social media activities and how they protect their privacy online. Not surprisingly, teens don't have the same privacy concerns as adults  do in using social media.  They also don't like to "share" their social media sites with adults - leading to the movement from Facebook to newer sites like Instagram. Fastest way to make something unpopular with teens? Bring in old people.

You can access the full report here, and a summary of the findings is below:

·        Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they did in the past. For the five different types of personal information that we measured in both 2006 and 2012, each is significantly more likely to be shared by teen social media users in our most recent survey.

·       Teen Twitter use has grown significantly: 24% of online teens use Twitter, up from 16% in 2011.

·        The typical (median) teen Facebook user has 300 friends, while the typical teen Twitter user has 79 followers.

·        Focus group discussions with teens show that they have waning enthusiasm for Facebook, disliking the increasing adult presence, people sharing excessively, and stressful "drama," but they keep using it because participation is an important part of overall teenage socializing.

·        60% of teen Facebook users keep their profiles private, and most report high levels of confidence in their ability to manage their settings.

·        Teens take other steps to shape their reputation, manage their networks, and mask information they don’t want others to know; 74% of teen social media users have deleted people from their network or friends list.

·        Teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their data; just 9% say they are "very" concerned.

·        On Facebook, increasing network size goes hand in hand with network variety, information sharing, and personal information management.

·        In broad measures of online experience, teens are considerably more likely to report positive experiences than negative ones. For instance, 52% of online teens say they have had an experience online that made them feel good about themselves.