Teen Social Networking

according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12- to 17-year-olds provides some of the first independent numbers on social networking for that age group _ and found that older girls, in particular, are the most likely to have used social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook.The popular sites are among those that allow users to create profiles, swap messages and share photos and video clips, with the goal of expanding their circle of online friends.The Pew survey found that 70 percent of teen girls, ages 15 to 17, had profiles on social networking sites, compared with 57 percent of boys in that age bracket.
The survey also found that MySpace was, by far, the most popular site. Of the youth who'd used social networking, 85 percent said they used MySpace, while 7 percent had done the same on Facebook and 1 percent on Xanga.The survey of 935 U.S. youth, ages 12 to 17, was done by telephone in October and November. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.When looking at the entire age bracket _ 12 to 17 _ Lenhart and her colleagues found that 55 percent said they used social networking sites. Not surprisingly, she said, younger children in that age range were the least likely to do so, with just over a third of 12- and 13-year-olds saying they'd created a profile. Experts say this is partly due to the fact that sites such as MySpace require users to be 14 (though they can lie about their age to gain access).