It's no surprise that most teens are on Facebook every day: 95 percent of teens ages 12-17 are online, and 80 percent of online teens use social networking sites. New research on teens and social media says that this is mostly a good thing -- but not entirely. The good news, according to a recent pew study, is that most teens have social networking experiences that help them feel good about themselves or make them feel closer to others, and 69 percent of teens surveyed said that people their age are mostly kind to one another on social networking sites.
But the bad news is that many teens of these teens report having negative experiences. 22 percent of teens have had an online experience that caused a friendship to end, 25 percent had an online experience that led to a face-to-face argument or confrontation, and 13 percent felt nervous going to school the next day after an encounter on a social networking site. And nearly all social media-using teens -- 88 percent -- have witnessed other people be mean or cruel on social network sites.
Many teens have experienced cyberbullying first-hand, and more often than not, it's girls who are targeted. 33 percent of girls ages 12-13 say that their peers are mostly unkind on social networking sites (compared to 9 percent of boys ages 12-13), while 20 percent of girls ages 14-17 (compared to 18 percent of boys ages 14-17) report that people their age are mostly unkind online.
Are the people in your class mostly kind or cruel to each other on Facebook? Is there a difference between how the guys you know and the girls you know use it? Sound off below.