A big research study on social media usage among teens was just released by the Pew Research Center. For those of us working to target this demographic using social media, the findings are especially interesting.

The key nuggets I took away? Facebook usage is waning, parents are watching what they do online and teens DO think about their privacy when using social media.

The full report is available here.

For those of you who don’t want to read through the whole white paper, key findings include:

Teens are sharing more information about themselves on their social media profiles than they did when we last surveyed in 2006:

• 91% post a photo of themselves, up from 79% in 2006.
• 71% post their school name, up from 49%.
• 71% post the city or town where they live, up from 61%.
• 53% post their email address, up from 29%.
• 20% post their cell phone number, up from 2%.

60% of teen Facebook users set their Facebook profiles to private (friends only), and most report high levels of confidence in their ability to manage their settings.

• 56% of teen Facebook users say it’s “not difficult at all” to manage the privacy controls on their Facebook profile.
• 33% Facebook-using teens say it’s “not too difficult.”
• 8% of teen Facebook users say that managing their privacy controls is “somewhat difficult,” while less than 1% describe the process as “very difficult.”

Also interesting is what teens share and how they protect (or don’t protect) their private information on social media channels. This infographic demonstrates what they are sharing:

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