SOCIAL MEDIA & MOBILE INTERNET USE AMONG TEENS AND YOUNG ADULTS

Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr. (2010). Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults, 1-51. Retrieved December 5, 2013 from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx

Who doesn’t have access to the internet via mobile, smart tablet, laptop, or pc?  Not very many people according to the research are without some reach to the internet.  There are definite trends in the arenas of social media usage as well as mobile internet.  The trend indicates various findings which include some of the following:  blogging is on the down for the teen and young adults while on the rise for older adults, an increase in social networking within all surveyed groups, Twitter is the one social media that is on the downtrend among teens, cell phone ownership and internet use has increase currently at 75% and finally, only about 4% of families did not have some form of internet. 

My response to article:

Truth be told, I was a little shocked by the article.  It might have due to my naivety, but I wasn’t aware the scope of social media.  I was awed that the largest upward trend in cell phone ownership was in young teens.  I would have thought that the trends started to show up at much younger age-even 6 to 7 year olds. 

I also thought it was interesting to know race and class had little to do to effect the ownership status of cell phones, but when it came down to ownership of a laptop of pc, race did seem to factor in.  So this obviously trickled down to the outcome of the other questions in the survey.  One of the questions concerned whether or not the teen got onto social media through the website via phone or laptop/pc.       

I hadn’t really thought about the positive side for teens using the internet and social media, until I read about teens, adults and online health information section.  I thought this was interesting because although teens are losing verbal skills due to using the phone as a means of communication, they also turn their phone use into somewhat of a research.  For topics that teens are not comfortable speaking to someone about, the internet gives them a means to find information and often useful, correct information. 

It was an interesting read.  Anyone questioning if the social media or phone usage is normal or not, needs to read this article. 

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