Quickly, let me note that Pew Internet has a new survey out on how American teenagers use social networking sites (dated yesterday – hey, that was Sunday! No rest for the wicked?), and that danah boyd (direct link to post not working?) and Fred Stutzman have already commented on it.

As previous surveys have found (sorry, no time to find the links, that one about how Norwegian kids use mobile phones and SMS comes to mind) teens primarily use social networks to hang out with people they already know. Danah writes:

I would like to highlight the fact that 91% of teens are using social network sites to stay in touch with friends they see in person while only 49% are using them to meet people (ever). I hope that this makes people realize that, for teenagers, these sites are *not* about networking. They are about modeling one’s social network.

The content of this post was entirely inspired by a post to the AoIR mailing list.