Social Networking Statistics

• 72% of teens have a social networking profile and nearly half (47%) have a public profile viewable by anyone.[1]
• Frequently children in 4th-6th grade levels engage in social networking activities. In the process they post personal, potentially exploitable, information about themselves online. Specifically, and within the last school year: 16% posted personal interests online, 15% posted information about their physical activities and 20% gave out their real name. In addition, 5% posted information about their school, 6% posted their home address, 6% posted their phone number and 9% posted pictures of themselves.[2]
• Some 23 percent of teen profile creators say it would be "pretty easy" for someone to find out who they are from the information posted to their profile, and 40 percent of teens with profiles online think that it would be hard for someone to find out who they are from their profile, but that they could eventually be found online. Another 36 percent say they think it would be "very difficult" for someone to identify them from their online profile. [3]
•  Teens often include the following information on their social networking profiles:[4]

o   Real age (50%)

o   Photos of themselves (62%)

o   City they live in (41%)

o   School name/location (45%)

o   Videos of friends (16%)

o   Videos of themselves (14%)

o   Their cell phone number (14%)

o   Places where they typically go (9%)

• 59% of teens perceive that public blogs or social networking sites are unsafe.[5]
• 76% of teens are at least somewhat concerned that posting information publicly could negatively impact future.[6]
•  26% of teens know someone something bad has happened to because of information or photos posted online.[7]