Teens are savvy online users

We librarians like to baby teens.  "How young they are, how innocent!"  Which is often followed by "And we must teach them how to use the Internet the right way."  Which is often followed by Sarah screaming silently inside her mind.

But we're wrong.  Dead wrong.  We're wrong to assume that they don't know what they're doing and wrong to assume that they have somehow remained innocent of all of the various threats online.

The Pew Teens and Social Media Survey (available as a PDF) released a couple of weeks ago showed that:

• 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation
• 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys
• 19% of online teen boys posted video content in a public place, compared with 10% of online girls
• 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least "some of the time"
• 66% of teens with an online profile use the site's privacy features to restrict access
• Just over half of teens with online profiles post false information
• Only 11% post both a first and last name
• Only 5% post their full name, photo, city, or state

On the same topic, a recent AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey showed that more teens use IM for homework (55%) than for dating (22%).  Surprised?  I hope not.  Teens are smart.  They have needs in their lives, like graduating for example, and will use the tools that will best help them meet that goal - like IM!  If this isn't enough convincing that your library should be seriously considering offering IM reference, then read Aaron Schmidt's post on this survey.

Both of these studies show me what I have long known from anecdotal interactions with teens and twenty-somethings - they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for and not only do they not need the hand-holding online that we've offered to them, they resent it.  After all, part of being a teen is finding your own way.  With some gentle guidance, let's offer them the opportunity to do just that instead.  They've proven that they can handle it.

And on the kids front, lest they be left out, a new poll from Cable in the Classroom finds that parents have gotten more proactive about talking with their children, very young children in some cases, about safe online behavior.  85% of parents and legal guardians of online children ages 6 to 18 have talked about online safety with their child/children in the past year.  Better yet, over 93% have taken some form of action (what exactly, it's not made clear) in order "to make sure the Web sites their kid visits meets with their approval."  Even though 71% report some sort of negative online incident with their kids in the last year, the negative incidents fell into categories you might not expect.  52% were advertising or commercialism related, 31% simply felt their kids spent too much time online, 26% felt their kids didn't exercise enough because of the Internet, and only 24% were exposed to "coarse language, or sexual or violent content online," which is the most-often-cited "bad boogeyman" when it comes to scaring parents about their kids being online.  From this study's numbers, that means that of all online teens, only 17% of the parents of people aged 6-18 were aware of any profanity, violence, or sexual content viewed online by their kids in the last year.  Given the breadth of the ages they're covering (I'm sure the teens swayed that number), this is a cause for hope - kids go online for what they've always relied on offline sources for over past generations.  By and large, they're interested in kid-stuff...not the big scary things we're afraid they're accidentally going to happen upon.  Kids are smart too...