Pew Study on Social Networking and Kids

If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out. It’s a Pew Study on the time teens spend on social networking sites.

Pew Internet: Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview

Here’s the big story: most teens use the “networking” sites to hang out with the friends they already have.

It’s networking in the sense that they’re hanging out with friends but not as much in the sense of meeting new people. It’s another indication that people use technology to do the things they already do…not for mind-bending new activities. (over time our activities change, but pretty slowly)

Like all studies like this, these results should be viewed more as trend indicators instead of the last word.

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Comments ( 7 Responses so far )

Pingback: Web Strategy by Jeremiah » Teens use Social Networking Sites to Reinforce Existing Relationships

1. Michael 7:28am, Wed 24th, 2007

That’s quite interesting. But I think it is totally stupid to use social networking sites for meeting your friends, at least if your friends still live in your area. Why don’t you meet them in real life?
Don’t spend so much time in front of your computer. Enjoy the real life!

2. Josh 8:57am, Wed 24th, 2007

Michael, you make a good point. However, I’m not sure that teens are replacing face-to-face contact with social networking sites, but augmenting it. They’re simply in contact 24 hours a day, and instead of using a phone they’re using a web site.

3. CM Harrington 3:35pm, Wed 24th, 2007

most teens use the “networking” sites to hang out with the friends they already have.

While that is technically correct, it does imply that they *don’t* use it for other things like making new friends. The data however, says that almost half the users do exactly that. 49% is a huge number of people. I, for one, use Livejournal to do my “social networking”. At first, I didn’t know a lot of people, then very quickly, I became friends with several of them. I’ve actually reached a critical point where adding and making new friends would be too much, and I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them. I am not so sure the research delves into such possibilities. (It falls into both “making new friends, *and* keeping in touch with friends I already have and/or “rarely see in person’.

I don’t think people go into the social networking sites specifically looking for new friends without an existing infrastructure already using that site. New friends just kinda “happen” (friends of friends).

4. Josh 9:06am, Thu 25th, 2007

Good point, CM. Thanks for adding that. The study does strongly suggest that there is a certain serendipity of new friends happening.

5. Strafverteidiger München 7:25am, Wed 2nd, 2007

Good Point. Very usefull article. see you.

6. Fotomodelki 5:59pm, Mon 14th, 2007

Hello!
This is good idea.
Greting for this.
Best regards

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Bokardo is a blog about interface design for social web sites and applications. I write about recommendation systems, identity, ratings, privacy, comments, profiles, tags, reputation, sharing, as well as the social psychology underlying our motivation to use (or not use) these things. If this sounds interesting to you, grab my RSS Feed. If you want to know more about me, check out my about page.

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