Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Teens on Facebook GOL (grumble out loud) as Mothers Become Friends

Mothers have found a even better way to humiliate their children than showing baby pictures: becoming a friend on Facebook.

Like the cyber version of being picked up in an uncool car, teens are now mortified by nagging chats and clueless comments left by their mothers on their online profiles.

Mothers tend to use Facebook "as a way to reattach the umbilical cord...But then they nag and get offended if they feel neglected." said Erika Brooks Adickman, 28, who with friend Jeanne Leitenberg, 27, launched a site last year called "Oh Crap! My Parents Joined Facebook."

Nearly a third of Facebook teens are ready to unfriend their parents on the social networking site and are twice as likely to want to avoid Mom as Dad, according to an AOL study released Tuesday.

Youngsters are blanketing the Web with protests. Scores of complaints about mothers posting annoying messages and embarrassing photos have been posted on Twitter.

More than three-fourths of parents on Facebook are connected to their children's profiles, according to the report from AOL.

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-teens-20100825,0,5741860.story

Time Spent on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Grows

Social networking is a social phenomenon.

For further proof, just take a gander at new Nielsen research out today. It says Americans spend nearly a quarter of the time they're on the Internet from their PC, or about six hours a month, on social-networking sites and blogs. That's a quantum leap from a year ago, (up 43% over last year) and underscores the growing power of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The new research also reveals U.S. consumers spend the plurality of their time online, or 36% of it, communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal e-mail and instant messaging.

The rise of social networks has enhanced consumption of videos, movies and news and sports articles. "Friends and family are endorsing content to others," says Dave Martin, vice president of primary research at Nielsen.

And the face of that audience is getting older: Twice as many Americans over 50 visited social networks than kids under 18, Nielsen says.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-08-02-networking02_ST_N.htm

Teens Experiencing Facebook Fatigue

Online gaming site Roiworld surveyed 600 teens ages 13 to 17 in late April and found that teens spend two hours per day online on average, 80% of which is spent using a social network. These same teens are, however, showing signs of “Facebook Fatigue.” Nearly one in five (19%) who have an account no longer visit Facebook or are using it less.

Of the group that are saying goodbye to Facebook, 45% have lost interest, 16% are leaving because their parents are there, 14% say there are “too many adults/older people” and 13% are concerned about the privacy of their personal information.

The study also suggests that the teens that continue to stick to Facebook do so primarily to play games. Roiworld found that more than one-third of the teens who play games on Facebook admit to spending at least 50% of their time on the site immersed in gameplay. The online gaming trend extends far beyond Facebook, as 75% of surveyed teens claim to play games on the web.

Source: Mashable
http://mashable.com/2010/06/30/teens-social-networks-study/

Younger Teens Don't Want to "Friend" Their Parents

A recent survey by myYearbook and Ketchum of teen social media users showed younger teens do not want to be friends with their parents on social media sites. In fact, 56 percent of teen social media influencers aged 13 to 14 say they "hate it" or are "nervous" or "annoyed" when their parents "friend" them on social media sites, while only 27 percent of teen social media influencers aged 18 to 19 responded this way. 

Source: PRNewswire
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/teen-social-media-influencers-wield-power-online-and-offline-94839664.html

Teens With Online Friends Socialize More Offline

This survey fits with the research released last week that indicated that teens highly involved in social media are also the most well-adjusted socially...

A recent survey by myYearbook and Ketchum of teen social media users showed that a teen's social media popularity translates offline, as teen social media influencers are 40 percent more likely to have attended a party over the last weekend than average teens. They also are 20 percent more likely to have had a friend visit them at home in the last week.

"The survey dispels the notion that the most engaged teens on a social network are most likely to be home alone on a Saturday night; those teens who are most social online are most social offline," said Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook.

These influencers are also more active than the average teen offline in terms of listening to music, playing video games, and reading books, newspapers, and magazines.

Source: PRNewswire
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/teen-social-media-influencers-wield-power-online-and-offline-94839664.html

Teen Social Media Butterflies May Be Better Adjusted

With his gaze fixed on a tiny screen, hearing plugged by earbuds and fingers flying, the average teenager may look like a disaster in the making: socially stunted, terminally distracted and looking for trouble. But look beyond the dizzying array of beeping, buzzing devices and the incessant multitasking, say psychologists, and today's digital kids may not be such a disaster after all.

Far from hampering adolescents' social skills or putting them in harm's way, as many parents have feared, electronics appear to be the path by which children today develop emotional bonds, their own identities, and an ability to communicate and work with others.

In fact, children most likely to spend lots of time on social media sites are not the least well-adjusted but the healthiest psychologically, suggests an early, but accumulating, body of research.

In one new study, 13- and 14-year-olds were found to interact on social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace simply in ways that were consistent with their offline relationships and patterns of behavior. And of the 86% of children who used social media sites (a number that reflects the national average), participants who were better adjusted in their early teens were more likely to use social media in their early 20s, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity or their parents' income.

Adolescents are largely using social networking sites to keep in touch with friends they already know, not to converse with strangers, said the author of that research, University of Virginia psychologist Amori Yee Mikami.

"So parents of well-adjusted teens may have little to worry about regarding the way their children behave when using social media," Mikami added. "It's likely to be similarly positive behavior."

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-socially-connected-kids-20100518,0,3088349.story

Alcohol Companies Use New Media to Lure Young Drinkers

Alcohol companies are increasingly using the latest new media technologies -- including cell phones, social networking sites, YouTube and other features of the expanding digital universe -- to reach young drinkers, a new report contends.

And existing regulations may not be keeping up with the marketing trend, the report's authors added.

They're calling on the Federal Trade Commission, state attorney generals and others to investigate the phenomenon and examine whether current mechanisms to protect youth from alcohol marketing still work effectively in the digital era.

Young people are being exposed to a 24/7 "digital marketing ecosystem that is transforming the nature of advertising," said Kathryn Montgomery, a professor of public communication at American University in Washington, D.C. and co-author of the report, titled Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age.

One area the study authors want officials and activists to look at is weak age-verification mechanisms, pointing out how easy it is for a young person to enter a false birth date so they are legally "of age" to enter a Web site.

According to the report, the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth estimates that underage drinking accounts for 12 percent to 20 percent of the U.S. alcohol market.

There are several major distribution platforms, the report authors stated, the first being social networking sites such as Facebook, where not only can companies promote their own brands, but they can enjoin consumers to promote their brands, too.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/05/19/alcohol-companies-use-new-media-to-lure-young-drinkers-report.html

Nearly Half of Parents Friend Their Kids on Facebook

According to a new survey by Retrevo, almost half of parents say that they're friends with their teenagers on social networks.

Many parents see the value in trying to "friend" their kids on social networks, even though it might be a bit awkward at times. According to Retrevo, most parents who are Facebook friends with their kids have teenagers—only 8 percent of parents said kids under 12 should have Facebook accounts in the first place—and they say that they learn a lot about their teens this way.

Retrevo surveyed more than 1,000 adults in the US and found that parents not only want to learn more about their kids through technology, they also have solid opinions on how their kids should use it. Even though parents aren't always as savvy as their kids, they generally know how to wield the social networking carrot and stick within the home in order to elicit desired behaviors.

For example, 12 percent of surveyed parents ban social networking as a form of punishment, and 18 percent ban all Internet usage. This is creeping very close to the 22 percent who nix TV, showing that parents understand how valuable Internet access is to their teens.

Source: ars technica
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/05/report-parents-use-facebook-to-punish-learn-about-their-kids.ars

Facebook Retools Its Safety Info Center

Facebook has revamped its safety information center to better help its 400 million users protect themselves while using the social network, the company said Tuesday.

The Safety Center has been retooled to try to make it more user-friendly, offer content from safety advocacy organizations, and provide advice for specific groups: parents, teenagers, teachers, and law enforcement officers.

Facebook compares staying safe online to learning stranger danger or the rules of the road.

"There's no single answer to making the Internet or Facebook safer," Elliot Schrage, vice president of Global Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, said in a statement. "That's why we're introducing new tools and advice for parents, educators and teens. We want our approach for improving safety to be as simple, easy and effective as our approach to improving Facebook's user experience."

Source: CNET News
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20002345-93.html

Teens Abuse, Find Comfort in Anonymity on Formspring.me

Teenagers are flocking to Formspring.me, a social media tool that allows users to anonymously ask questions for others to publicly answer. Users get a unique URL that points their friends (or foes) to a simple form that reads, "Ask me anything." But, of course, the simplest things can sometimes be the most problematic.

A police department in Suffolk County, N.Y., investigating the suicide of Alexis Pilkington, 17, might consider Formspring.me as a factor in her death. According to the Associated Press, Alexis was receiving harassing messages before her death last March 21. Her family insists she was troubled before the cyber bullying, but authorities are looking into how the anonymously delivered messages influenced her suicide.

Formspring.me attracted 50 million unique visitors last month, according to the company.

Jolie O'Dell of ReadWriteWeb attributes one of the reasons for widespread adoption to "our deep and insatiable love of self-reference." It's one of the biggest reasons for the success of Facebook, and now it's what Formspring is based on: me, me, me, me...me.

Besides self-reference, it's the actual element of demand that retains users. For most using Facebook, there's only one little thing that brings us back: the notifications. Users know that the more they interact with their Facebook network, the more notifications they'll get. On Formspring, there's a similar anxiety for feedback; the answerers constantly check back for questions, and the askers want their answers yesterday. Because users invest time into the service, they expect to get something in return.

Self-reference and gaming elements are what engage and retain those who answer questions. But what attracts the askers? Anonymity. Users can anonymously tell someone how they feel about them, or something they feel they should know. They can ask questions they'd be otherwise too embarrassed to ask. But, worse, they can also fill a user's in-box with hate mail, harassment, or other inappropriate statements.

Source: CNET News
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20001513-2.html