Social Networking Sites Appeal To 90% Of British Teens

A third of British teenagers have at least four social networking profiles on sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, according to research conducted by Q Research for MediaGuardian.co.uk.

The survey of 11 to 20-year olds showed that more than 90% of UK teenagers have used a social networking website and more than half use them because their friends do.

Of those surveyed, 93% said they had registered with a social networking site, and 19% said they “couldn’t live without it”. 54% said they started using the sites because of friends and just 5% dismissed social networking as a waste of time.

Only 7% of users said they did not trust information posted by others on social networking sites, but 49% said they only trusted profiles if they knew the person offline.

Female users aged 16-20 were the most likely to trust information online, but were also the most cautious in posting their own personal information. More frequent users had fewer safety fears and trusted other information more.

Joanna Shields, the Bebo international president, said that anthropologists will view social networking sites as part of a social turning point.

ComScore data from March showed that Bebo was the second busiest website in the UK in terms of time spent on the site, with users spending an average of five hours 21 minutes on the site each month. The data ranked the site as the 16th most popular in the UK in unique users.

However, as some of the sites plan to expand to mobile (see MySpace Searching For Mobile Partners), the research revealed that teenagers were far less enthusiastic about social networking services on mobile phones, with 68% saying they are not interested.

Concern about the cost of mobile data services was by far the most common response, but respondents also said services are easier to use on a PC because of bigger screens, easier navigation and faster connectivity.