Youth of Today and Social Media
Pew Internet released a report on a study of how teenagers interact with Social Media. It would appear that teenagers’ hobbies haven’t changed, although the platform through which they are enjoyed definitely has. The days of Annie Frank curled up with her dairy are gone, as more teenagers shut their books, go online and start personal blogs.
“After years of parents being concerned about the privacy and exposure that the Internet offers to their children, teenagers are creating their own boundaries and protection.”
The number of teen bloggers has nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006. Out of all the teenagers that did the survey, in the USA, 28% had a personal blog. 33% had worked on web pages or blogs for other people.
The survey showed that girls in their late-teen-years blog more than the boys of the same age, which doesn’t come as a surprise for most. Girls have always favoured writing in diaries and expressing themselves in written form. However, it appears that things might be changing in the even younger generation. Boys between the ages of 12 and 15 write blog posts more frequently than girls of the same age.
Compared to the olden days when teenagers used to draw and paint, social media has opened up a completely new door for creativity in multimedia formats. 64% have uploaded content to websites, in the form of photos, images, videos and articles.
Of the 64%, 39% said they created the content themselves, using their own artworks, essays and photography skills. The survey shows that boys tend to be more interested in uploading videos, while the girls upload photos more frequently.
What is interesting to find in the survey is that most of the teenagers have restricted access to their online-profile pages, including personal photos and information. After years of parents being concerned about the privacy and exposure that the Internet offers to their children, teenagers are creating their own boundaries and protection.
Alternatively, there have been reported stories of teenager’s blogging too much information about their personal lives. A 16-year-old boy was arrested in Denver after he had posted photos on his MySpace.com profile. The photos depicted him holding handguns and posing with rifles. Currently the teenager is being held at the juvenile detention centre.
The teenager’s high school, Evergreen High School, has suspended him, after the photos began circulating around the community. Other parents phoned the principle and some kept their children at home until the teenager had been removed from the school.
Evergreen High School is in the same district as Columbine High School, where two teen gunmen killed 12 students and a teacher in 1999. One of the teen gunmen had posted a thread on the Internet, which wasn’t taken seriously at the time, just before the shootings.
The principle of Evergreen High School has reported that they might expel the teenager, due to his activity on MySpace.com. The principle’s statement on the matter was, “The photos were very disturbing, and while the content was not a direct threat, we just felt it was important for us to take appropriate disciplinary action.”
There have been cases where the healing aspects of writing and sharing emotions have been obvious in teenager blogs. In Lompoc, Calif, a 16-year-old girl dedicated a website as a memorial for her stepfather, David Grabowski, who passed away.
The website contains poetry, pictures and music, dedicated to her stepfather, as well as an online slide show. The slide show consists of images scanned in from photo albums, taking users through a virtual tour of her stepfather’s life, from baby to adult. The closing slide, consisting of a collage of the photographs, writes “David Bruce Grabowski, 1966 - 2005.” The teenager reports that the creation and maintenance of the site helped her a lot during her mourning.
Many parents still believe that having online profiles exposes their teenagers to an unnecessary threat. Although many parents disagree, saying that it should be encouraged, as it is a form of release for teenagers. They also say that the Internet is becoming a powerful tool that is needed, and the more exposure the better. Parents who are slightly indecisive on the matter have suggested that their teenagers write in a dairy first, until they are old enough to understand the threats of social media.
About the Author: Celeste writes for an online-marketing company, whose client is SEO Trends and News which specializes in giving the latest news on the online market industry. Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Written by: Scott Frangos
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 am and is filed under Blogging Help, Social Media-Marketing, Web Help. 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.
