Pew Internet

Research analyst Kathryn Zickuhr will discuss reading, writing, and research in the digital age at the edUi 2013 plenary talk.

Susannah Fox will speak at the Joslin Diabetes Center's annual innovation conference in Washington, DC.

Susannah Fox will conduct a 90-minute Master Class on participatory research: models, methods, opportunities, and challenges.

Susan Hildreth, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will present on a recent policy report, developed with the Campaign for Grade-level Reading, that highlights the role of libraries in early learning. In addition, Pew Internet Director Lee Rainie will describe the Project's newly released report about the spcial role libraries play in the life of families with children.

Susannah Fox will present data on U.S. technology adoption and use related to the pursuit of health.

The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) will host Lee Rainie for “The Myth and the Reality of the Evolving Patron: The RUSA President’s Program” on Saturday, June 29 at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.

Susannah Fox will participate in a national invitational meeting on "Promoting and Sustaining the Collaborative Network Model in Pediatrics" in Alexandria, VA.

Susannah Fox will present data from the first national survey related to self-tracking for health.

Yesterday, Pew Internet and American Life Project (in collaboration with Berkman) unveiled a brilliant report about “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.” As a researcher who’s been in the trenches on these topics for a long time now, none of their finding surprised me but it still gives me absolute delight when our data is so beautifully in synch. I want to quickly discuss two important issues that this report raise.

Race is a factor in explaining differences in teen social media use.

Pew provides important measures on shifts in social media, including the continued saturation of Facebook, the decline of MySpace, and the rise of other social media sites (e.g., Twitter, Instagram). When they drill down on race, they find notable differences in adoption. For example, they highlight data that is the source of “black Twitter” narratives: 39% of African-American teens use Twitter compared to 23% of white teens.

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Teens are sharing a lot of content, but they’re also quite savvy.

Pew’s report shows an increase in teens’ willingness to share all sorts of demographic, contact, and location data. This is precisely the data that makes privacy advocates anxious. At the same time, their data show that teens are well-aware of privacy settings and have changed the defaults

Today’s teenagers are, in the eyes of Pew, walking contradictions, increasingly open despite their understanding of privacy risks (and mastery of the tools needed to combat them). But this data isn’t necessarily new or groundbreaking or indicative of some strange breed of crazy kids with their rock and roll and YouFace and twittering; it’s more evidence of the “privacy paradox” of online life, a concept first advanced by Susan Barnes in a 2006 entry in First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal of the Internet. “In America, we live in a paradoxical world of privacy,” writes Barnes. “On one hand, teenagers reveal their intimate thoughts and behaviors online and, on the other hand, government agencies and marketers are collecting personal data about us…. Many government records have been turned into digital archives that can be searched through the Internet. Every time we use a shopping card, a retail store collects data about our consumer spending habits.”

Youth are sharing more personal information on their profiles than in the past. They choose private settings for Facebook, but share with large networks of friends.

Twitter is booming as a social media destination for teenagers who complain about too many adults and too much drama on Facebook, according to a new study published Tuesday about online behavior. It said teens are sharing more personal information about themselves even as they try to protect their online reputations.

Teens told researchers there were too many adults on Facebook and too much sharing of teenage angst and inane details like what a friend ate for dinner.

"The key is that there are fewer adults, fewer parents and just simply less complexity," said Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Research Center, one of the study's authors. "They still have their Facebook profiles, but they spend less time on them and move to places like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr."

Size of Facebook network by gender and age

A list of some of the most revealing and interesting comments about how teens think about social networking sites and how they navigate issues of identity and privacy.

Among teen social media users, percent who post the following to the profile they use most often

Youth are sharing more personal information on their profiles than in the past. They choose private settings for Facebook, but share with large networks of friends.

Youth are sharing more personal information on their profiles than in the past. They choose private settings for Facebook, but share with large networks of friends.