More than half of all teenagers in the US now use social networking sites to self-publish and to communicate with friends, according to research. And MySpace dominates.
Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 55% of teens use social networking sites and 85% of those used MySpace most often. Facebook was preferred by 7% of the group and Xanga by 1%.
Only 31% of teenagers set up their profile to be available to anyone; 45% made it accessible only to friends.
Social networking has grown with phenomenal speed, but in the release researcher Amanda Lenhart said this data shows that teenagers are more cautious that the hype would suggest.
"There is a widespread notion that every American teenager is using social networks, and that they're plastering personal information over their profiles. These findings add nuance to that story - not every teenager is using a social networking website and, of those that do, more than half of them are in some way restricting access to their profile."
Forty-eight percent visit social nets at least once a day, and over a fifth visit several times a day. That can be explained by understanding that the objective for most users is to communicate with friends.
The vast majority of those surveyed - 91% - said they used the sites to stay in touch with the friends they see regularly and 72% use it to make plans with them. Eighty-two percent said they communicate with friends they don't often see in person and 49% said they use sites to make new friends. Only 17% said they use social nets to flirt.
Perhaps most interestingly, older boys are most likely to use the sites to flirt. In the survey of 12-17 year-olds, 29% of older boys said they used the site to flirt compared to 13% of older girls.
Older girls were the most frequent users overall though. Seventy percent have used a social net compared with 54% of older boys.
More than 80% of those surveyed used the sites to communicate by posting messages on their friend's profiles or sending private messages. Three-quarters post comments on friends' blogs and 60% send group emails. Only a third do that annoying thing where they post winking smileys. ;-)
