Over the past few years parents have become increasingly concerned about who their kids are socializing with online, and no wonder. According to a study released this week by Alloy Media + Marketing and Harris Interactive, teens are spending more and more time communicating online with friends, and some of those friends are people they’ve never met. What’s more, teens are becoming increasingly reliant on the web and other new media to communicate with their peers, and many say that they feel they can reveal more about themselves through this type of communication than talking in person. On the web they can say or do things they wouldn’t dare in person for fear of social stigma. The study also found that there’s a significant gap in the amount of time spent communicating online with friends between tweens and teens, which includes a major increase in the percentage logging onto social networking sites. Suzanne Martin, Ph.D., research manager of youth and education research for Harris Interactive, talks to Media Life about why kids are so comfortable online, the biggest differences between teen and tween communications, and how parents can monitor their kids’ online buddies.

You found that talking to friends in person was favored by 81 percent of tweens but only 53 percent of teens as their favorite way to stay in touch. Why the big decline as they get older?
 
Tweens are more likely to talk and stay in touch with friends in person or using a landline. There is much more parental monitoring involved in these communications situations. As youth age, their means of communication grows.

Teens have more access to other means of communications such as cell phones, computers hooked up to the internet without as much parental monitoring that allow for more instant messaging, emailing and text messaging. 
 

Technology-wise, what are the biggest differences between how teens and tweens socialize? Why?
 
As teens age they have access to more means of communication tools with less parental monitoring. Some of the developmental tasks teens should master before adulthood include attaining a stable sense of personal identity, building meaningful relationships with peers, and establishing a greater sense of independence from their parents.

The internet provides a forum for this identity development that most often occurs in the teen years.

Teens are almost three times as likely to have a computer in their bedroom that is connected to the internet than their tween counterparts (35 percent versus 12 percent). Teens are also far more likely to have a cell phone than tweens (65 percent versus 22 percent).
 

One-third of teens say they have online friends they've never met in person. Is this higher than for adults? Why are such friendships easily cultivated among teens, and should this worry parents, safety-wise?
 
From our yearly YouthPulse online data collection of 8-21s, I can speak to the point that adults ages 19-21, are slightly more likely to make friends online (49 percent), followed by teens (44 percent) and then tweens (9 percent).
 
Friendships are easily cultivated online because this is where youth are communicating with each other: 81 percent have an IM buddy list, 85 percent have an email contact list, 75 percent have an online profile, and 77 percent have cell phones that can have internet access.
 
Parents should be cognizant of the online world their children are socializing in and give them similar tools necessary to evaluate on-ground relationships. There are plenty of groups parents can investigate to learn about online safety--ikeepsafe.org, blogsafety.com, wiredsafety.com and getnetwise.org.
 

Teens report some of their closest friendships are nurtured online and say it's easier to show their true selves online. Why is that?
 
It is possible that the multiple modes of communication allow for expressing and connecting at a deeper level. For example, a teen who may hesitate to make statements to another teen in person may feel more comfortable making the same statements in an online fashion. Because an online outlet for communication is available, the communication continues where it might not in its absence.
 

One thing you found was that half of tweens say talking online to their friends makes them feel cool, compared with only a third of tweens. Is there a shift that occurs as kids get older that makes the internet seem more functional and less fun?
 
It is possible, though this particular data doesn’t speak to this. We can hypothesize that this is related to novelty as well as function. Things that are “novel” are “cooler,” and to the tweens the internet is more novel.
 

How important are social networking sites for online interactions among teens?
 
Social networking sites are a vital part of youth communication. Three in four teens have an online profile on a community or social networking sites. On average, teens with social networking sites have 75 friends posted on that site.  
 

Are they as popular among tweens?
 
Social networking profiles are more commonly created by teens, with 75 percent of teens having a social networking profile compared to only 43 percent of tweens.