Teenagers Keep and Make Friends Online, Pew Says
Dino Grandoni
Researchers say they have discovered something that teenagers already know: Young people use the Internet to maintain friendships made at school or work, but also to forge entirely new ones with peers they meet while browsing social networks like Instagram or playing a game like Call of Duty.
In a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, 57 percent of American teenagers age 13 to 17 say they have made a friend online. Nearly three in 10 of the teenagers surveyed said they had a network of more than five friends they had made through the Internet. The vast majority, 77 percent, of these relationships don’t culminate in an actual meeting, the Pew researchers said.
For at least some parents, the survey’s could come as a revelation.