Most Teens Manage Online Profiles with Care

For parents worried about what their teens post about themselves in online social networks, here's some good news from the Pew Internet & American Life Project: Most teens try to make sure their social network profiles do not contain personal information that can identify them to strangers.

In "Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks," Pew researchers Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden find that 55 percent of teens have social network profiles and most of them restrict access to them. Some 66 percent say their profile is not visible to everyone on the Internet. Half provide some false information to keep their privacy and to "be playful and silly."

Most teens use social networks to keep in touch with people they already know and friends they don't see very often. A majority (82 percent) include their first names and photos of themselves (79 percent)  in their profiles.

There are risks, of course. Nearly one third of online teenagers, and 43 percent of social-networking teens, say they have been contacted online by strangers. And 17 percent (31 percent of social-networking teens) have 'friends' online who they have never personally met. Of teens who have social-network profiles, one-third include their town names, one-third include their last names, one-third include their email addresses and 61 percent mentioned the names of the cities or towns in which they live.

The full PDF report is a must read for parents. Concerns parents have are real, but this study shows that most teens are very aware of the risks of opening their lives up to strangers and are learning to take precautions to socialize online without putting themselves in jeopardy. That's a very good sign.

We've also seen this week how social networks such as Facebook can be more than a place for kids to hang out and socialize. They can be a place of community to grieve, reminisce, and comfort each other during a tragedy of unfathomable scope. Facebook was has been all that in the aftermath of the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus.

Link: Online: Students Flock to Social Networking Site [SFGate.com]