Teens use Social Networking Sites to Reinforce Existing Relationships

Categories: Social Media, Web UsagePosted on January 14th, 2007

Bokardo summarizes some of the stats from the Pew Study on Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview. I’m not surprised at all by these findings:

“A social networking site is an online place where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users. In the past five years, such sites have rocketed from a niche activity into a phenomenon that engages tens of millions of internet users. More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends.”

It pretty much indicates that teens use these sites to keep in constant communication with existing networks and friends. The interesting thing is that these relationships are now being done in full public, which has it’s advantages for rapid communication vs concerns over privacy.

BTW, I recently subscribed to Bokardo’s feed, he’s really got a very high signal to noise, focused on the intersection of Web UX and Social Media and I enjoy his thoughtful and analytical posts.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 14th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Social Media, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Since I’m in game 6+ hours per day in a teen social game, I hear you on this one. The majority of what I see on there is conversation and catching up. Flirting is common, but just good convo is the mainstay.

The convo is open, definitely, the IM feature is rarely used. However, the talk is still intimate as the veil of anonymity lowers the inhibitions a tad. As someone who is not a teen, seeing the way these games are played by teens is fascinating. By the end of this month I’ll have logged more than 350 hours in the game.

And thanks for the tip to Bokardo’s site. Very good-subscribed.

Posted by Robyn Tippins on January 15th, 2007 at 2:59 pm

What teen social game are you on?

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on January 15th, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Hi Jeremiah,

I think it will be interesting to see if this shifts as people get older. As social networking is a relatively recent phenomenon, it will be interesting to see if the population base shifts to other networking sites as the groups age(something like MySpace-Facebook-LinkedIn). I think we need a few more years of information before this becomes apparent.