December 20, 2007 5:04 AM
Pew Study Reports, Social Media Widely Used by Teens
A study by the Pew Internet and Americal Life Project revealed that social media are gaining a stronghold on teens life as more and more teens are using social media for content creation and interactive communication.
Based on the study 64% of online teenagers whose ages range from 12 to 17 years old, are increasingly creating online content, as compared to 2004's data.35% of this teenagers are girls who are into blogging while 20% are online boys.
Interestingly 54% of teenage girls are posting their photos online as compared to 40% of boys who post their photos on social media sites and blogs. Online boys however dominates video content creation as more and more video contents uploaded on web video uploading sites were created more by boys than girls.
Other results of the study show:
- 47% of teens have posted photos on the web - 89% of teens who posted receive comments from other people - many teens limit access to their content 28% of teens use social media as a medium of communication among peers and family members
This explains why web predators are having a hayday on the web victimizing helpless young netizens. Although, there's nothing wrong with socializing and interacting in the online environment, teenagers should still exercise some caution when divulging their personal information on the web.
Social media like any other web-based technology which are freely available to anyone is not a bad for as long as everyone should exercise some degree of caution and privacy protection. The teenage web population should follow what the mature web people are doing and talking about when it comes to online visibility and availability of information. Online privacy is a big issue among the mature web citizens and I don't see any reason why teenagers should not take it seriously as well.
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