This section of the report examines teens’ perceptions and social experiences online. We take readings on the overall emotional climate of social media spaces and then delve into their specific experiences, both positive and negative. In our survey, we follow teens’ experiences of online cruelty – either personally felt or observed – from incident to resolution, by asking them about how they reacted to the experience and how they saw others react. We ask them about whether they sought advice and where – both general advice about online safety and responsibility, and specific advice on how to handle an experience of online cruelty on a social network site. Additionally, we ask whether the advice they got was good.

We also plumb the actions and interventions of parents – both through their eyes and also through the eyes of teens. Finally, we explore where parents figure in the constellation of influences in their child’s digital life.

The majority of social media-using teens say their experience is that their peers are mostly kind to one another on social network sites, but their views are less positive when compared with similar assessments from online adults.

We asked teens the following question about what they see in social network spaces: “Overall, in your experience, are people your age mostly kind or mostly unkind to one another on social network sites?” Most of the 77% of all teens who use social media say their experience is that people their age are mostly kind to one another on social network sites. Overall, 69% of social media-using teens say their experience is that peers are mostly kind to each other in social network spaces. Another 20% say their peers are mostly unkind, while 11% volunteered that “it depends.” However, in a similar question asked of adults 18 and older, 85% of social media-using adults reported that their experience was that people are mostly kind to one another on social network sites, while just 5% reported that they see people behaving in mostly unkind ways.¹⁹

Girls ages 12-13 have the most negative assessment of social network spaces.

While teens across all demographic groups generally have positive experiences watching how their peers treat each other on social network sites, younger teenage girls (ages 12-13) stand out as considerably more likely to say their experience is that people are mostly unkind. One in three (33%) younger teen girls who uses social media says that people her age are mostly unkind to one another on social network sites, compared with 9% of social media-using boys 12-13 and 18% of boys 14-17. One in five older girls (20%) who uses social media says that in her experience people her age are mostly unkind to one another on these sites.

Black teens are less likely to say their experience is that people their age are kind to one another on social network sites.

Black social media users are less likely than white and Latino users to report that people their age are mostly kind online. While 72% of whites and 78% of Latino youth say that their experience is that people are usually kind on social network sites, just over half (56%) of blacks say the same.

Teens tend towards negative words when describing how people act online.

As a part of this project, we conducted seven focus groups with teens ages 12 to 19 to ask teens more in-depth questions about their experiences interacting with others on social network sites. In the groups, we asked the teen participants questions about how people usually acted online. In some cases, we asked students to tell us about their observations of online behavior and then tell us how they thought people should act in online spaces. In one exercise, we asked the participants to write down words or phrases that they felt captured these concepts. As the word clouds²⁰ created from the words they shared suggest, teens overwhelmingly chose negative adjectives to describe how people act online. Words that appeared frequently included “rude,” “mean,” “fake,” “crude,” “over-dramatic,” and “disrespectful.” Some teens did use positive words like the frequently mentioned “funny” and the less common “honest,” “clever,” “friendly,” “entertaining,” and “sweet,” but overall the frequency of positive words was substantially lower. Other terms shared by participants could be interpreted differently depending on the context of use – these include the popular term “different” and others like “emotional,” “cautious,” “outspoken,” “strange,” and “open.”

Of the teens who were asked about how they thought people should act online, the responses were substantially more positive and included words like “respectful,” “nice,” “friendly,” “mature,” “peaceful,” and phrases like “mind your own business” and “don’t put it all out there.”

After the exercise, we asked the focus group participants follow-up questions to plumb the discrepancies between the way they had witnessed people acting on social media and how they thought people should act on the sites.

Many teens told us that they just felt like different people on these sites and thought that people they see online often act very differently on social media from how they act in person and at school.

• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: That’s what a lot of people do. Like, they won’t say it to your face, but they will write it online…
• MIDDLE SCHOOL BOY: I know people who, in person, like refuse to swear. And online, it’s every other word.
• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I think people get – like when they get on Facebook, they get ruthless, stuff like that. …They act different in school and stuff like that, but when they get online, they like a totally different person. You get a lot of confidence.
• HIGH SCHOOL BOY: [There’s] this real quiet girl who go to my school, right, but when she’s on Facebook she talks like some wild – like, be rapping and talking about who she knew and some more stuff and you would, like, never think that’s her. You would think that’s somebody else …

Teens also identified specific online social spaces — open comment spaces and question and answer sites — that feel particularly unwelcoming:

• HIGH SCHOOL BOY: YouTube comments are pretty bad. They’re, like, oh my God.
• HIGH SCHOOL BOY: I have a friend who came out and he had a Formspring²¹ and, like, a bunch of people from this school, like, attacked his Formspring and, like, wrote really, really homophobic things on it.

Often teens felt bolder, ruder, or more empowered because they did not fear physical violence in the online space. One middle school girl told us that she thought people were ruder online “because you can’t hurt anybody online. You can’t punch nobody through the screen.”

• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL 1. “I think I act ruder to online people.
• MODERATOR. You act ruder? How come?
• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL 2. Because she doesn’t have to see them, so they can’t beat her up.”

For some teens we spoke with – particularly middle school girls – fights and drama on social media flowed back and forth between school, the street, and Facebook, often resulting in physical fights during the in-person portions of the conflict.

• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I read what they were talking about online, then I go offline and confront the person who was saying something to her.
• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: …Like that’s how most people start fighting because that’s how most of the fights in my school happen – because of some Facebook stuff, because of something you post, or like because somebody didn’t like your pictures.

One middle school girl detailed the circular flow of conflict between her social network site and her in-person life, and the ways that she, at her mother’s behest, tries to break the cycle.

• “…the other day, Monday, I was not cool with somebody and so they tried to put on their status something about me. But I didn’t reply to that because my mother told me not to say nothing back because she didn’t want anything more to happen.”

She further explains a physical fight she was supposed to have and the ways in which others taunted her offline and online about her allegedly skipping out on the conflict. She describes her attempts to ignore online comments made about her “ducking” the fight, until the taunting escalated to insulting her friend.

• “…I was supposed to be fighting somebody Monday, but the security guard picked me up and brung me back inside the school. Yeah, they were like, ‘oh my man, [MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL] ducked it.’ I was like, that’s crazy, but I didn’t reply back and then she said something about my best friend…”

For other teens, the fact that they can act differently on social media translates into more real, positive experiences. Instead of seeing social media as a place that fomented conflict or bad behavior, some teens felt as though it increased a sense of closeness and allowed people to be authentic or more real than they could be offline:

• HIGH SCHOOL GIRL: I think people act different on Facebook because that’s like their – I mean, I think the self that they show you on Facebook could be their true self, like who they actually want to be.
• MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: Yeah, I act the same how I act in school. Like online I’m still goofy and stuff like that.

Several teens told us that they find friends and romantic interests easier to talk to and more open in these online social spaces.

• HIGH SCHOOL GIRL: But I feel like, since it’s on Facebook, I guess it’s easier to talk to people, or like, admit things and, like, you just have, like, open conversations because they’re not, like face-to-face, so it’s not as, like – they’re not, like, embarrassed or nervous or something.
• HIGH SCHOOL BOY: [O]n Facebook definitely people … can be more open in some ways than in real life. Like, they’ll say more than they will because it’s not, like, face-to-face, so. Like, some things that might be awkward in real life won’t be that awkward in a conversation on Facebook.

At least one teen with whom we spoke attributed the ease of conversation in social media with a sense of privacy in social chat spaces:

• MIDDLE SCHOOL BOY: I don’t know, it just feels like in person, it can be awkward and weird if you’re trying to tell something, like, personal and secret because you’re looking at them... But like on a Facebook chat, it is very – it’s like there’s no one unless it’s like a hacker or something. But that’s rare. You can talk where you can actually tell them lots of things, or send them a private message, not, like, public.

And others do not find friends changed when they talk to them online:

• HIGH SCHOOL GIRL: I don’t really have a like, kind of, issue, I guess. I mean, when I talk to someone online – like … my best friend since sixth grade – she doesn’t change when she’s online or when I see her in person. I don’t really get to see her that often because she goes to a different school, but no, she doesn’t ever change.

Other teens spoke of the challenges of managing disparate friend groups in the same public space visible to all of them:

• HIGH SCHOOL GIRL: Well, I think – I still – I think people still make personas in real life too. It’s just, like, like if I’m with a different group of friends I’ll be more one way than I am with another group of friends just because that’s how – it’s more comfortable for them and it makes it fun for the group.