For today's teen, friendships are developed in areas beyond the school walls or their neighborhoods. Email and social networking sites such as MySpace (R), Sconex, and Facebook(TM) allow young people to expand their social connections by contacting and becoming friends with people who they have not necessarily met in person. Alloy Media + Marketing and Harris Interactive(R) findings from a collaborative study offer an emerging picture of what friendship means to today's youth. New technologies shift means of communication across this digital generation, as teens come to define their closest circles by those they are connected with both online and offline.
Researchers say online social networks are providing fertile ground for teens to practice social behaviors, to try out different personas in their exploration for identity, and to nurture friendships. In some cases, online social networks allow for more intimate connections than offline relationships. The study depicts a generation more at ease through virtual communication, with many reporting they are more likely to reveal their true selves and to share more personal information with friends online than face-to- face.
According to Suzanne Martin, Ph.D., Research Manager Youth and Education Research, Harris Interactive, "The Internet plays an increasingly important role in kids' friendships. Social networking websites aid in youth development by providing an arena to build meaningful relationships, establish independence, strengthen their identity and become connected to a community that is not limited to their physical community."
Virtually Connected
Friendships play an increasingly important role in young people's lives as they grow up. While more tweens (ages 8 to 12) prefer spending time with their parents than with their friends (58% vs. 31%), by the teen years (ages 13 to 17), this preference has dramatically reversed. More than twice as many teens say they prefer spending time with their friends than with their parents (56% vs. 22%). Youth connect with each other in a variety of ways and favor certain means of connecting over others. Both tweens and teens are most likely to spend time with their friends in school and outside of school, by getting together with friends in person and speaking to them on the telephone. Teens are much greater users of email or Internet Messaging (IM) (74% vs. 26%) and text messaging (37% vs. 9%) than their tween counterparts.
More is Better
Social circles have widened in the age of digital media, causing a shift in perception of social status among today's youth. The number of friends young people attract to their social network profiles is an indicator of their status among peers. Most teens (59%) report having between one and ten friends while more tweens (69%) report having that many friends. However, the number of friends appears to increase when the term "friend" is put in the context of an online profile or IM buddy list. Teens that have these types of lists have an average of 75 people on their online profile, 52 on their IM buddy list, 39 on their email contact list and 38 contacts on their cell phone.
Friends I've Never Met
For many teens, meeting in person is not a prerequisite for being considered a friend. Online connections have provided a socially accepted platform for teens to form friendships. More than one-third of teens (36%) have friends whom they've never met in person, but have only "talked to" online.
Virtual Confidants
For some teens communicating online allows them to show more of their true selves. Three in ten teens say they can share more with a friend online (30%) and that they are more honest when they talk to friends online (29%).
For young people, a friend is "someone I care about that I can talk to about anything," "someone who cares about me," "someone who is always there for you and you always hang out with", and "someone you can trust." For most teens, email, IM and social networking sites provide another way to nurture friendships with people they know in person as well. But the length of a friendship is also an important factor in its closeness. Since many of teens' "online only" friendships are more recent, only time will tell how those will evolve.
