US teens tune into online friendships

“But cellphones, social media, and for boys, online video games are becoming more deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of friendships”. According to brand new data released by the Pew Research Center, today’s teens are swapping their personal login information left and right.

– Girls are more likely to unfriend or unfollow former friends. Another 77 percent have never met up with someone they met online while 3 percent said they “refused” to. Fully 68% of social-media-using teens say they have experienced drama among friends on the platform. The survey, conducted online in September and October 2014 and February and March 2015 and via 16 online and in-person focus groups with teens, also found that most online friendships teens are forging remain just that – online.

The survey found boys were more likely to make online friends than girls (61% vs. 52%).

Seventy-two percent of teens play video games, with 84 percent of boys doing so, compared to 59 percent of girls. Not only is gaming a way for teens to meet and socialize, but it can also be a learning venue for a variety of useful skills including, of course, collaboration and planning.

But social media has a dark side. “This is the space where a lot of social life happens for a lot of adolescents”.

Teens still spend substantial amounts of time with friends in-person, especially at school. A quarter said they do so on a daily basis.

Most teens do still talk to their friends on the phone, contrary to popular belief, though only 19 percent talk to their friends on the phone every day. “In many instances, these technologies makes teens feel closer and more connected to their friends”.

In fact, the study found that while only 25% said they interacted in person with their friends on a daily basis, 55% said they did so via texting, 27% said they IM’d friends daily, and 23% said they met up on social media sites.

For the most part, the study is good news for parents who worry about their teen’s use of mobile and social media. Teen girls (32%) are more likely than their male counterparts (20%) to say they have had this type of conflict, while whites are more likely than blacks to have fought with a friend because of something that happened online.

The final report of the 2008 Internet Safety Technology Task Force cited research showing that “Internet-initiated connections that result in offline contact are typically friendship-related, nonsexual, and formed between similar-aged youth and known to parents”.

The survey wasn’t all good news. There have been a number of studies on how the fear of missing out – where users get anxiety when not checking social media or when they see friends posting about a gathering that doesn’t include them – can cause depression among users, even adults.