Teen Use of Social Networking Sites

In our last post we touched on the rise of social networking use among teens and adults. Another study has been released this week from Pew Internet about teens and social media. It is a good follow up and reveals more detailed information about this demographic and their use of social networking sites.

The study has found that 93% of teens (aged 12-17) use the Internet. That is an amazing number but it can be a bit misleading as the study was for American teens only, so keep that in mind as we proceed.

They go on to say that 64% of online teens (and 57% of ALL TEENS) participated in content creating activities on the Internet. What does this mean exactly? The study has detailed breakdowns that you can review but for our purposes, they are engaging in social activities and networking on the internet on a regular basis. It also found that 55% of online teens have created a profile on a social networking site like facebook or myspace. This contrasts the emarketing survey which says 70% of all teens use social networking sites. Whether it is 55% or 70% we can not tell but, we can be sure that social networking is a trend that is not to be ignored by advertisers.

In the last post we also touched on the use of email by teens, or lack thereof. The Pew Internet report finds the following:

“Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends. Despite the power that email holds among adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the communication arsenal of today’s teens. Only 14% of all teens report sending emails to their friends every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list we queried. Even among multi-channel teens, who are more likely to take advantage of any communication channel they have access to, just 22% say they send email to their friends daily. “

Teen instant messaging use is also dropping.

“the percentage of online teens who report having ever used instant messaging dropped a statistically significant amount from 75% in 2004 to 68% in 2006. This does not necessarily mean that instant messaging is declining in popularity among teens. Rather, it could be that instant messaging functionality has been integrated into so many social networking and gaming applications that teens no longer recognize instant messaging as a separate technology. “

If they are not sending emails and using instant messaging less, how are they communicating? Social networking sites of course. Sites like facebook, myspace, hi5, bebo, friendster, orkut and many smaller niche sites are their main modes of communication. Their friends are also all linked in and it is easy and convenient to access their social network to chat, send messages, post images, flirt, hang out and share info.

Not only are a higher percentage of teens using both the Internet in general and social networking sites, the frequency of their use is increasing.

“The percentage of online teens who report using the internet daily has increased from 42% in 2000 and 51% in 2004 to 61% in 2006. Among teens who go online daily, 34% use the internet multiple times a day and 27% use the internet once a day. ”

While no study is perfectly accurate, we think this gives some additional insight to teen social networking and Internet use. Social networking sites are very often an integrated part of the next generation’s lives already. If the teen demographic is your advertising target, a part of your strategy to introduce your products to them should be dedicated to advertising on social networking sites.

We hope this has been informative for you to learn about teen social networking use but do not make the mistake in thinking that it is not the only demographic using the sites. “20 somethings” to “50 somethings” use of social networking sites is quickly on the increase as well. That is another post altogether though.

The full Pew Internet report on teen social networking and media use is available here.

This entry was posted on December 22nd, 2007 and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.