Being online is a way of life for millions of young Americans. And increasingly, social networks are their medium.
As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites, like MySpace.com with 40 million members, as a way to establish their social identities.
Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. Increasingly, America's middle and upperclass youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours). This is partly a function of how much more comfortable young people are on the Web: Fully 87% of 12 to 17-year-olds use the Internet, vs. two-thirds of adults, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Teens also use many forms of media simultaneously. Fifteen to eighteen-year-olds average nearly 6.5 hours a day watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Internet, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey. A quarter of that time, they're multitasking. The biggest increase: computer use for activities such as social networking, which has soared nearly threefold since 2000, to 1 hour and 22 minutes a day on average.
Source: BusinessWeek, December 12, 2005