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A window onto family Facebook use: TRUSTe study

October 18, 2010 By Anne 7 Comments

Eighty percent of US parents of teens have a social networking account; of those parents, 95% have Facebook accounts; and of that 95%, the vast majority (86%) are friends with their teens in Facebook. Interestingly, in those households where both a parent and a teen have Facebook accounts, more than a third of the teens said they got their parent to join Facebook,” reports TRUSTe, which commissioned the study of 2,000 parents and teens by Lightspeed Research. TRUSTe, the privacy policy certification company, didn’t appear to ask the teen respondents why they got their parents to join Facebook, but I imagine it was to ease parental concerns about social networking – not that FB is the all of teen social networking (see “Parents, you’re not just focusing on FB, right?”).

TRUSTe says in its press release that it called the study “The Kids are Alright” because the results “reflect in many ways parents and teens doing the right things on social networks.” It said parents are monitoring and engaging with their teens in social sites and “teens are using available privacy controls.” Even so, TRUSTe added, “many teens are over-posting, over-sharing, and over-friending.” However, its study also found that parents and teens are remarkably in sync on what teens are doing in social sites, within a few percentage points of each other in most cases. For example – when teens were asked, “Which of the following types of data do you post on your social networking profile?” and parents were asked, “Which of the following types of data do you think your teen posts on their social networking profile?” – they were 3 percentage points apart on “sharing of personal interests” (70% parents, 73% teens); 2 percentage points on sharing photos and videos (70% parents, 72% teens); and 2 percentage points on the teen posting his/her picture (80% parents, 82% teens). The two biggest gaps (9 points apart) were on sharing full name and posting status updates, which surprised me because status updating is such a basic FB feature (though one of my kids never uses it). Even in the same family, Facebook use is very individual, which is why I feel it’s so important to talk with our kids about their social media use and take surveys about how all youth use social networking with a grain of salt.

In the area of privacy, parents and teens seem pretty aligned too. The survey found that 80% of parents and 78% of teens feel in control of their personal information on social sites, and 84% of parents are confident their teen is responsible with personal information on social sites. That confidence is somewhat based on experience, apparently, because 72% of parents monitor their kids’ social networking, “most at least weekly,” TRUSTe reports.

Other highlights about how families negotiate Facebook and the social Web:

  • 67% of parents and 70% of teens understand privacy protection on FB; 52% and 59%, respectively, find the privacy settings clear.
  • “82% of parents feel they should be able to delete information from their teens’ accounts by contacting Facebook or other sites.
  • “18% of teens have been embarrassed or disciplined as a result of a posting.
  • “80% of teens use privacy settings at some point to hide content from certain friends and/or parents.
  • 68% of teens surveyed have at some time accepted friend invites from people they don’t know, with 8% accepting all, 34% accepting some, and 26% accepting rarely.

In his coverage, my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid pointed to the notable contrast between this survey and Common Sense Media’s recent survey by Zogby, finding 75% of parents “say they would rate the job that social networks are doing to protect children’s online privacy as negative” (another key difference is that Lightspeed compared parent and teen perspectives). Larry suggests the contrast in parents’ views may have something to do with when parents were asked. [Here is what I felt about focusing solely on parents’ concerns with an eye toward legislation at a time when – as I wrote earlier – legislation is becoming a slow, inflexible blunt instrument in a continuously changing user-driven media environment. How does that really affect young people’s continuously unfolding online behavior?!]

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Filed Under: Literacy & Citizenship, Parenting, Research Tagged With: Facebook, lightspeed, Parenting, Privacy, Social Media, social networking, social Web, truste

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  1. Adults' social networking more than doubled since 2008: Study | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    August 31, 2011 at 7:59 pm

    […] social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%). [See also "A window onto family Facebook use: TRUSTe study."] Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry […]

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  2. A new book & fresh look at online privacy | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    July 20, 2011 at 6:33 pm

    […] “A window onto family Facebook use: TRUSTe study” Permalink Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Wednesday, July 20, 2011, at 6:13 pm by Anne. Filed in Privacy and tagged A New Culture of Learning, Adam Thierer, Alan Simpson, Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, consumer privacy, Douglas Thomas, John Seely Brown, Jules Polonetsky, online privacy, Tim Lordan, youth online risk. […]

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  3. In FB, 'kids don't want to be friends with their parents'? | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    June 23, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    […] there are other factors involving parents and teens on FB. What about that interesting finding in a TRUSTe study last fall that more than a third of parents whose kids are on Facebook were actually asked by their kids to […]

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  4. Togetherville a great acquisition for Disney | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    February 24, 2011 at 6:35 pm

    […] training wheels for parents; a lot of parents are now friends with their children in Facebook (see this). The magic, here, is the opportunity for young kids and parents to be hanging out together online […]

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  5. British bishop’s costly Facebook gaffe | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    November 24, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    […] of Edinburgh on Tuesday morning.” [As for social networking privacy practices in the US, a recent study found that 67% of parents and 70% of teens understand privacy protection on Facebook, and 52% and […]

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  6. Talking privacy at household & international levels | NetFamilyNews.org says:
    November 1, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    […] insights being friends with our kids in social sites can give us into their lives – see this recent study, which found that more than a third of teen Facebook users asked their parents to friend them in […]

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  7. Tweets that mention A window onto family Facebook use: TRUSTe study | NetFamilyNews.org -- Topsy.com says:
    October 18, 2010 at 4:58 pm

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by annecollier and annecollier, Izzy Neis. Izzy Neis said: RT @annecollier: New blog post: A window onto family Facebook use: TRUSTe study http://bit.ly/dp3nsx […]

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Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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