Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites

Part 1: Teens and Social Networks

Facebook dominates teen social media usage

In addition to asking about general social media usage, we also included a question on our July survey asking about the specific social media sites on which teens have actually created an account. Overall, Facebook is the dominant social media site among teens, as 93% of teen social media users have a Facebook account. MySpace ranks a distant second in overall usage, with 24% of teen social media users having an account on this site. Among teen social media users:

  • 93% have an account on Facebook
  • 24% have an account on MySpace
  • 12% have an account on Twitter15
  • 7% have an account on a Yahoo site
  • 6% have an account on YouTube
  • 2% have an account on each of the following: Skype, myYearbook, and Tumblr
  • 1% have an account on Google Buzz

In total, 59% of teen social media users have an account on just one site, while 41% have accounts on multiple sites. Among teens with one social media profile, 89% maintain that one account on Facebook while the remainder is spread among a number of sites. And for teens with multiple accounts, fully 99% have an account on Facebook. Put another way, account ownership for the vast majority of teen social media users boils down to either “Facebook only” or “Facebook plus another site or sites.”

Where teens maintain their social media accounts

Notes

15 Note: This figure is lower than the earlier figure indicating that 16% of online teens use Twitter. This discrepancy may be due to the fact that this question measures account ownership rather than general usage. Additionally, teens may not consider Twitter when they hear the term “social networking sites”—our account ownership question asked teen social media users to indicate “on which social networking site or sites” they have an account.

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Copyright 2012 Pew Internet & American Life Project

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project is one of seven projects that make up the Pew Research Center. The Center is supported by The Pew Charitable Trust.