Wednesday, January 9

Teens and Social Media

Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released a study on teens and social media. There is nothing particularly new, but it does provide solid data to support what we already knew or suspected. You can find a nice summary of the data in this Ypulse article. Ypulse is not a Christian site, but it generally does a good job of keeping its finger on the pulse of younger generation, particularly when it comes to media and marketing issues. Here are some highlights Pew Internet study:

Girls are more likely to engage in content creation online than boys are. 35% of all online girls blog compared to 20% of online boys. 54% of online girls have posted photos online compared to only 40% of online boys.

While much of this online presence is about keeping the conversation going among friends (particularly among girls), 39% of online teens do share their own artistic creations, such as artwork, stories or videos. 26% of teens remix content they find on the internet into their own creations.

The one area of online content creation that boys dominate is in posting video online. Boys are nearly twice as likely (19% to 10%) to post videos on the internet than girls.

Teens are creating this content for an audience -- that is, they want people to see it. Almost half of online teens have posted photos where other people can see them, and 89% of those teens report that people post comments about their pictures at least "some of the time." However, teens are picky about the audience they are posting for. 66% of teens with social network profiles restrict those profiles in some way, and 77% of those who post pictures restrict who can view those pictures at least "some of the time." Compare this to the only 54% of adults who restrict access to their pictures.

Social media is also replacing email as a means of staying in contact with friends. 54% of teens send messages to friends over social network sites daily, compared to only 22% who send email to friends daily. Text messaging is also replacing email, with 60% of teens reporting that they send text messages to friends daily.

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