The advice is still to be wary of strangers on the street, especially if they’re offering you candy. But with social interaction now fully available in today’s immersive Web 2.0 environments that are both online meeting space and a new form of ‘virtual reality’, kids are finally learning they need to be as careful and as street smart online as they are off. A new survey has the details...

Pew remind us that 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.

Given the huge membership base that MySpace, Facebook and other sites have acquired over the past couple of years, it should come as no surprise that young people know all about it whether they use social networking sites or not, especially as many bands worldwide now use MySpace to promote their music, their albums and their artists to build as big a fan base as possible, both offline and on, with MySpace addresses read out on FM music stations aimed at the youth market.

Pew find that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. Pew say that for girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships, while for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends.

A big advantage of social networking sites is also the fact they are free to use. There are no monthly membership fees or requirements to buy stamps to contact people. There are opportunities to spend money on interesting add-ons to your MySpace site, but they are not necessary, with significant changes able to be made to your site if desired, without needing to pay anything.

Pew conducted the survey by telephone from October 23 through November 19, 2006 among a national sample of 935 youths ages 12 to 17. They asked about the ways that teenagers use these sites and their reasons for doing so.

Among the key findings:

 • 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.

 • 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible to all internet users. They limit access to their profiles.

 • 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.

 • Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% of older boys have done so.

 • 91% of all social networking teens say they use the sites to stay in touch with friends they see frequently, while 82% use the sites to stay in touch with friends they rarely see in person.

 • 72% of all social networking teens use the sites to make plans with friends; 49% use the sites to make new friends.

 • Older boys who use social networking sites (ages 15-17) are more likely than girls of the same age to say that they use social networking sites to make new friends (60% vs. 46%).

 • Just 17% of all social networking teens say they use the sites to flirt.
 
• Older boys who use social networking sites are more than twice as likely as older girls to say they use the sites to flirt; 29% report this compared with just 13% of older girls.

Visit the Pew Internet & American Life Project website to download the report in full for more information.
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