Most American teens who use social networking sites say that their peers are "the most amiable" to each other online, but most have been seeing mean or cruel behavior, a new study on November 9.The study by the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project, the Institute for Family Safety Online and Cable in the Classroom in-depth analysis on the environment and behavior of American teenagers in social networks.
The study shows that 95 percent of young Americans aged 12-17 are online and connected to a 80 per cent of teenagers use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.
Sixty-nine percent of boys who use social networks have said they are for the most part these plants, while 20 percent said their peers are more rude to the network, and 11 percent said: "It depends."
Eighty-eight percent said they were seeing online behavior mean or cruel, and 15 percent said they have personally been the target of mean or cruel behavior on social networks in the 12 recent months.
Twelve percent said they saw a cruel behavior of social networking sites "often", 29 percent said they face "sometimes" and 47 percent said it was "time to time."
"The social networking sites have created a new space for teens to interact and witness to a mixture of altruism and cruelty of these sites," said Amanda Lenhart Pew Research Center.
"For most adolescents, are interesting and rewarding areas," said Lenhart, author of the report, "Teens and the friendliness of Cruelty is a social network: how does an American teenager exploring the new world of" digital citizenship. "
"But most have also seen a darker side," she said.
"" And for a subset of adolescence, the world of social media is not enough because a place has an atmosphere of drama and that behavior. "
Ninety percent of teens said they ignored the average behavior, they saw, 80 percent said they have personally defended a victim and 21 percent said they personally participated in the harassment of others on a social networking site.
Nineteen percent said they had been bullied in the last 12 months - either in person, by text message, phone call or online.
Twelve percent said that the person being bullied, nine percent said they were victims of bullying by SMS and eight percent said they bullied online or via e-mail, a social networking site or through the messaging instantaneous.
While 78 percent of teens say their social media interactions leads to a positive result - as the deepening of friendship - 41 percent reported at least one negative result as an argument, the loss of friendship, problems with their parents or even a physical fight.
Parents are the primary source of advice on problems of young people online, according to the study.
Eighty-six percent of online teens said they had received advice from their parents about safe Internet use and 70 percent said they received advice from a teacher or another adult the school.
Sixty-one percent of teens said their parents had checked their social network profile page.
Nicky Jackson Colaco, who manages the security network on Facebook - the largest social network in the world, with over 800 million members - welcomed the report.
"We believe that educating teens about safety is a responsibility shared by political leaders, safety advocates, parents, and services like Facebook," he said.
"Facebook is believed that for safety, bullying and harassment issues in a proactive way - such as building an environment of trust is fundamental to our mission and to ensure a positive experience for all who use our site."
The survey was carried out for teens 799 19 April to 14 July, and has a margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points.
Members of the Family Online Safety Institute AOL, Comcast, Disney, Facebook, France Telecom, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Verizon cable in the classroom is the foundation of National Education of the American television industry, Cable
