Technology enabling teens to find friends, create support networks

Other high-ranking daily communication tools were instant messaging, with 27% of teens using it daily, social media, at 23%, messaging apps, at 14%, and then video games at 13%. The survey also found that most of these friendships remain online.

According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, 76 percent of 13- to 17-year-old teenagers surveyed said they use social media.

Some 57 per cent of teens aged 13 to 17 surveyed said they had made a friend online, with 29 per cent claiming to have made five or more new friends that way.

Overall, 59 percent of teens “are in touch with their closest friend on a daily basis, with 41 percent indicating that they get in touch “many times a day”, according to the survey’s authors. “Consequently, many teens feel obligated to project an attractive and popular image through their social media postings”. Ninety-five percent said they spend time with friends in person outside of school, at least occasionally.

Curiously enough, most of the friendships that are made online stay online.

The study found some downsides to all that sharing. More than 60 percent of the teens said their social media username is one of the first three pieces of information they share with a new friend.

Teenagers these days are more tech-savvy than ever, so it’s no surprise that many are forging new friendships not in the schoolyard or neighborhood – but on the Internet. Girls are a lot more likely (78 percent vs. 52 percent) to meet friends through social media. 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. Seventy percent say it makes them feel more connected to their friends’ feelings. 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. While a majority of teens have not fought with a friend over something that initially occurred online, 26% of teens have experienced this type of digitally facilitated conflict. But only 1 in 5 reported that they’d taken that friendship offline.

“Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers”, the report notes. Nearly half had been posted about in ways they couldn’t control – a group no doubt overlapping with the two-thirds who reported experiencing drama on social media.

The downside to the online activity: 88 percent of social media users believe that people share too much about their life online. You can find a lot more information about teens and social media at ConnectSafel.org, the site of a non-profit organization where I serve as CEO.