TRUSTe Releases Survey Results of Parents and Teenagers on Social Networking Behaviors

TRUSTe, provider of the leading privacy trustmark, today announced the results of a survey of parents and their teenagers on social networking behaviors -- the first national social networking privacy survey to be conducted on both parents and their teens that also measures parental expectations against actual teen behavior. The poll, conducted by Lightspeed Research, included responses from two thousand parents and teenagers to reveal: their level of involvement with social networks; perceptions and concerns about their privacy when using social networks; and parental monitoring and engagement with their teens on social networks.

Key findings from our survey include:

• 80 percent of parents and 78 percent of teens feel in control of their personal information on social networking sites;
• 84 percent of parents are confident their teen is responsible with personal information on a social networking site;
• 72 percent of parents surveyed monitor their teens' accounts, with 50 percent of these parents monitoring weekly, 35 percent daily and 10 percent monthly; and,
• 84 percent of parents are accurate in understanding the amount of time their teen spends on social networks and generally have a good understanding of the activities they are engaged in online
• 18 percent of teens have been embarrassed or disciplined as a result of a posting;
• 80 percent of teens use privacy settings at some point to hide content from certain friends and/or parents; and,
• 68 percent of teens surveyed have at some time accepted friend invites from people they don't know, with 8 percent accepting all, 34 percent accepting some, and 26 percent accepting rarely.

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