McClatchy-Tribune
This is an excerpt from the book “CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Kids in the Digital World of Texting, Gaming, and Social Media,” by Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, MD (American Academy of Pediatrics, $14.95).
In March 2009, Nielsen Online released a report, Global Faces and Networked Places, with some interesting yet unsurprising data – social networking sites are used much more than e-mail for our primary means of communication.
Interesting points from the report include
– Social networking sites and blogs are growing 3 times more than any other area on the Internet.
– Social networking sites are now multigenerational; 35- to 49-year-olds use Facebook to the same extent as 18- to 34-year-olds.
– Facebook use has increased 566 percent from December 2007 to December 2008 and replaced MySpace as the most popular social networking site.
Add to these data the fact that kids are using computers much more now than in the past. The March 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation report, “Generation M: Media in the Lives of 818 Year-Olds,” revealed a 44 percent increase in computer use from 1999 to 2004 (27 minutes per day in 1999 to 1 hour 2 minutes in 2004).