Hannah Green
Associate
Hannah Green ran the Families and Care programme at Demos before leaving for Japan where she will continue to carry out comparative research on care and families. She was involved in Demos’ public interest consultancy work with the Department for Education and Skills, Local Authorities and County Councils. She is co-author of the following reports: Independent Living: The right to be equal citizens, (Demos 2005) Personalisation..
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released the overview of their latest study on teens' usage of social network sites. As danah boyd comments, most of the data is not surprising, but it is interesting. Here are some of the key findings:
- 55% of online teens (ages 12-17) have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
- 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible to all internet users. They limit access to their profiles.
- 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.
- Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% of older boys have done so.
What’s interesting for us is that a lot of their findings chime with the research that we have just completed and are poised to launch tomorrow – Their space, education for a digital generation. Given the coverage that this debate has been given in the national press we know it’s a growing and significant issue that clearly has interesting international dimensions.
If you would like to read more about the report have a look at
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It is good to see the evidence coming together to show that the new tools are being used both co-operatively and creatively by their users. I was impressed by the report on first reading and would want to engage with the debate I hope this will generate. There is clearly a link to other big issues at the moment , such as the Leitch report, which does not directly address the use of the skills articulated in this report or the changes in behaviour needed to respond to the education agenda implicit in the Stern Report. I will get back to you on this.
Nigel