Friendships made on the Internet tend to remain virtual, however, with only 20 per cent reporting they have met an online friend in the flesh, the Pew Research Center study found.
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5Roughly one-in-four teens have fought with a friend because of something that first happened online or because of a text message. Additionally, boys are generally more likely to make friends online as 61 percent of them did so versus 52 percent of girls. Girls choose to stay connected via Twitter and Facebook, the majority of them opting for these social-media platforms. Our latest report focuses on how teens, who often live tech-saturated lives, develop and sustain friendships in the digital age, including where they meet, communicate and spend time with friends. A disappointing 25 percent say they meet their friends in person every day. Where are the dire warnings about how the online world is depriving our teenagers of their opportunity to learn the skills needed to interact with people instead of screens while exposing them to all manner of bullying and cruelty, and tempting them to fritter away endless hours playing video games?
Eight out of ten teens taking part in the research said that Facebook and Instagram helped them to be more involved in their peers’ lives while a little under three quarters of respondents claimed social networks let them share their friends’ feelings. Now while the percentage of respondents who made no friends online looks high, the combined percentage of all other categories is 56. In many instances, these technologies make teens feel closer and more connected to their friends. For boys, this factor is more important as 84 percent of them claim to “feel more connected to friends” while playing compared to 62 percent of girls. It is certain that parents are increasingly anxious about their children’s online social life. About 55 percent play with friends via the internet.
“Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers”, the report notes.
Meanwhile, as we all know, there are some down sides to social media, and for teens, these issues may be exacerbated. Most (88 percent) teenage social media users believe that people share too much information about themselves on social media with 42 percent saying they have had someone post things on social media about them that they can not change or control.
While the survey didn’t cover this, I’m sure that some parents worry about friends kids meet online but, in 80 percent of cases, teens never see those people in-person and, when they do, data from other studies suggest that the vast majority of those who do have in-person meetings do not experience anything negative.
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Social media: 72 percent, with 23 percent doing so daily.
