Hey, Teens: Your Parents Are Probably Checking Your Facebook
BY ADAM
OSTROW OCT 20, 2010
Parents are getting increasingly savvy to the online
behaviors of their teenagers, and consequently, the majority of parents are
monitoring their teen's usage of social networking sites, according to a study
published earlier this week.
The survey of 2,000 parents and teenagers by TRUSTe and
Lightspeed Research found that 72% of parents check in on their teen’s social
networking accounts at least once per month. That’s made easier by the
prevalence of Facebook –
95% of parents and 90% of teens with a social networking account have one on
Facebook, and “most of those teens are friends with their parents,” according
to the study.
That said, most parents are actually fairly confident in how
their teens use social networking sites, with 84% reporting that they are “confident
their teen is responsible with personal information on a social networking
site.” That’s in spite of the fact that 68% of teens have accepted a friend
request from a stranger.
Teens – perhaps much moreso than
other groups – also seem to be much more cognizant of the privacy
settings provided by sites like Facebook, with 80% reporting they use them to
hide content from certain people, including their parents. Still, 18% of teens
said they, "have been embarrassed or disciplined as a result of a
posting."
Overall, it would seem that both parents and teens are
getting smarter about how to use social networking sites and manage their
privacy. Anne Collier, co-director of ConnectSafely.org, added in a statement that the study, “reinforces what we're
seeing – that parents and teens share a keen interest in teen privacy in social
network sites, that most teens are acting on those privacy interests, and that
parents are, at the same time acknowledging that and wisely seeing the need to
support teens' responsible use with some monitoring.”
No comments:
Post a Comment