As for girls, 78 percent who made a friend online met on a social media site like Facebook or Instagram. Not surprisingly, the majority of those friendships (64%) started on social media sites, though gaming was a big draw for boys.
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Phone calls with friends also still happen, but this is limited and is typically for interactions with a best friend, according to the survey.
Most of those new friendships stay online-only, according to the study; only 20 percent of the teens surveyed say they ever met their online friend in person.
A key finding in this report is that teens aren’t just documenting their friendships online, but 57 percent of them have made a new friend via the Web. Data shows that teens are spending less time hanging out with friends in person and more time texting. In fact, 38% of all teen boys share their gaming handle as one of the first three pieces of information exchanged when they meet someone they would like to be friends with compared to just 7% of girls. Some 60 percent of teens ages 15 to 17 have, compared to 51 percent of 13- to 14-year-olds, Pew said. Fifty-nine percent reported video chatting with their friends, and among boys especially, playing games with friends online (talking all the while) was a powerful way to bond with friends or meet new ones.
More than three quarters (76 percent) of teens use social media and 71 percent of all teens say they spend time interacting with friends on social media while 23 percent say they do so every day. But most of these relationships remain online, with a majority (77%) of all teenagers saying they have never met an online friend in person. About 55 percent play with friends via the internet. Sixty-eight percent say they have experienced drama with their friends on social media. (I didn’t know teen friendships were so high-maintenance). This is admittedly anecdotal, but my kids are in much more frequent contact with their far-flung network of childhood friends than I was at their age.
Almost three-quarters of teens surveyed said they have access to smartphones, and instant messaging was a preferred method of communicating with friends.
“Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers”, the report notes.
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The survey wasn’t all good news. And, for some, social media can bring on sadness with 21 percent reporting, “feeling worse about their own life because of what they see from other friends on social media”. 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.
