THE MEDIA HABITS OF TEENS: WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW

 

 

                                                                                               ALERT LETTER

 

  THE MEDIA HABITS OF TEENS: 

WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW

 

  Media’s presence in children’s lives is totally ubiquitous. Today, American children spend almost six hours a day with media. The potentially negative consequences of children’s media consumption receive a lot of attention. Yet media’s unique power and reach can also be used to educate children and enrich their lives.

Television, which once dominated children’s media consumption habits, is now joined by computers, video game players, cell phones and other connected devices. The result is that children today are completely immersed in media experiences from a very young age.

 Using social media like Facebook and Twitter has become part of modern adolescence. According to the report Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives which is based on a survey of 1,030 13- to 17-year-olds, and conducted online by Knowledge Networks: A Gfk Company in 2012,  90% of all American teens have used social media, three-quarters of them have a social networking site, and nearly one in three teens visits their social networking profile several times a day or more.                                                     

 For the vast majority of teens, social and other digital communications media are a daily part of life. Two-thirds (68%) of teens text every day, half (51%) visit social networking sites daily, and 11% send or receive tweets at least once every day. In fact, more than a third (34%) of teens visit their main social networking site several times a day. One in four (23%) teens is a “heavy” social media user, meaning they use at least two different types of social media each and every day.

More than one in four teens say that using their social networking site makes them feel less shy (29%) and more outgoing (28%); one in five says it makes them feel more confident (20%), more popular (19%), and more sympathetic to others (19%); and 15% say it makes them feel better about themselves. By comparison, only 5% say social networking makes them feel less outgoing; 4% feel worse about themselves, less confident, and less popular after using their social networking site; and 3% feel shyer.

Despite their love of new technology and their seemingly constant text messaging, teens’ favorite way to communicate with their friends is still to talk with them face to face. As one teen girl noted, “It’s the only REAL way to be with each other. ‘Moments’ only happen in person.” About half (49%) of all 13- to 17-year-olds say they prefer to communicate with their friends in person, and half choose some other method. Texting is next highest, with a third of youth preferring that method (33%). Only 7% say their favorite way to communicate with friends is through a social networking site, and just 1% say Twitter. Only 4% of teens prefer talking on the phone as their favored way to communicate with friends.

One aspect of online life that can be particularly fun and particularly nerve-wracking for teens is the constant posting of photos. Am I attractive enough? Am I with the right people? Do I seem popular? Is somebody else going to post an awful photo of me? Most (59%) teen social media users either strongly or somewhat agree that they “love” posting photos of themselves online — with girls a lot more likely than boys to feel that way (75% of girls, compared to 42% of boys). At the same time, however, although a majority of teens “love” posting photos, putting pictures of themselves online does take an emotional toll on some teens. Forty-three percent of social media users strongly or somewhat agree that they sometimes feel left out or excluded after seeing pictures of other people together online; 35% say they worry about people tagging them in unattractive photos; 27% say they get stressed out about how they look when they post pictures; and 22% say they feel bad about themselves if nobody comments on or “likes” the photos they post. Among social network users, 17% have edited photos to make themselves look better before posting them online. And while girls are more likely than boys to love posting photos, they are also more likely to stress about it as well.

 

For the generation of youth in their teens today, social media are so intricately woven into the fabric of their lives that they don’t really know what life would be like without them. But despite our concerns about social media, in the vast majority of cases, these media do not appear to be causing great tumult in teenagers’ lives. The research showed that more than eight out of 10 teens  express an overall sense of happiness with their lives, feel self-confident, and get along well with their parents. And there is a steadiness in their belief that what happens on their social networking site makes no difference in terms of how they feel about themselves.

Of course, those who are immersed in social media may not be best positioned to assess whether it is having an impact on them or not. Parents need to keep a careful eye on the role of social media in teenagers’ lives, and they may offer critical insights and cautions.  The concerns are real: about privacy, bullying, hate speech, body image, and oversharing, to name a few. And we won’t know for a long time how the immediacy of digital communication may be shaping interpersonal relationships and social skills.

©Common Sense Media Inc. 2015. All rights reserved.