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Social media use has become so pervasive in the lives of American teens that having a presence on a social network site is almost synonymous with being online. Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites. The authors focused their attention in this research on social network sites because they wanted to understand the types of experiences teens are having there and how they are addressing negative behavior when they see it or experience it. As they navigate challenging social interactions online, who is influencing their sense of what it means to be a good or bad "digital citizen"? How often do they intervene to stand up for others? How often do they join in the mean behavior? Many log on daily to their social network pages and these have become spaces where much of the social activity of teen life is echoed and amplified--in both good and bad ways. In their survey, the authors follow teens' experiences of online cruelty--either personally felt or observed--from incident to resolution. The authors asked them about how they reacted to the experience and how they saw others react. They asked them about whether they have received and where they sought advice--both general advice about online safety and responsibility and specific advice on how to handle a witnessed experience of online cruelty on a social network site. They also probed the environment around teens' online experiences by examining their privacy controls and practices, as well as the level of regulation of their online environment by their parents. The authors further sought insight into more serious experiences that teens have in their lives, including bullying both on- and offline and the exchange of sexually charged digital images. (Contains 2 tables and 57 footnotes.)

Teenagers' lives are filled with writing. All teens write for school, and 93% of teens say they write for their own pleasure. Most notably, the vast majority of teens have eagerly embraced written communication with their peers as they share messages on their social network pages, in emails and instant messages online, and through fast-paced thumb choreography on their cell phones. This raises a major question: What, if anything, connects the formal writing teens do and the informal e-communication they exchange on digital screens? A considerable number of educators and children's advocates worry that James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was right when he recently suggested that young Americans' electronic communication might be damaging "the basic unit of human thought--the sentence." They are concerned that the quality of writing by young Americans is being degraded by their electronic communication, with its carefree spelling, lax punctuation and grammar, and its acronym shortcuts. Others wonder if this return to text-driven communication is instead inspiring new appreciation for writing among teens. While the debate about the relationship between e-communication and formal writing is on-going, few have systematically talked to teens to see what they have to say about the state of writing in their lives. Responding to this information gap, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and National Commission on Writing conducted a national telephone survey and focus groups to see what teens and their parents say about the role and impact of technological writing on both in-school and out-of-school writing. This report looks at teens' basic definition of writing, explores the various kinds of writing they do, seeks their assessment about what impact e-communication has on their writing, and probes for their guidance about how writing instruction might be improved. (Contains 2 tables and 24 footnotes.)