In Italy, the minimum age to join the main social networks is 13 (in some countries, this limit is higher): despite this, there are many 11-12 year olds who have a profile on TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat. It happens though the platforms they are always looking for new ways to prevent itand often this happens without the knowledge of the parents or due to lack of awareness of what are the dangers of the Internet for children and teenagers.
This is confirmed by the data of a recent and interesting one survey conducted by the Department of Human Sciences of the University of Cassino on over 2,000 people aged between 11 and 13, coordinated by researcher Simone Digennaro.
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What emerged? First of all, that 88% of the interviewees, without significant variations on the basis of gender, regularly use social networks, with the percentage rising to 90% for only 12-year-olds and instead falling to 78% for eleven-year-olds. Furthermore, 4 out of 10 guys said they have a public profilei.e. open and accessible to anyone, which is another thing openly hampered by platforms, if not outright banned.
The research also highlighted which social networks are preferred by young and very young people: the most used app is widely WhatsAppto which more or less the entire sample has access, followed by TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. The latter case deserves further study: very widespread, Snapchat is however rarely used, mainly to edit photos to post on other social networks or to send to friends. The numbers confirm this disconnect: installed overall by over 60% of young people, about 30% of them open it less than 2 hours a day. Conversely, over 50% of respondents admitted to using WhatsApp more than two hours a day, as well as TikTok: both the percentages rise slightly with age (56% and 69% of 12-year-olds spend more than two hours a day on WhatsApp and TikTok).
Not surprising the gradual abandonment of Facebookleft to the boomers (real or presumed to be), and the very little interest in Twitter, as they make their way Discord e Twitchwhich almost rivals YouTube when it comes to streaming and gaming.
What young people do on social media
From the point of view of the activities, what is perceived by the survey is exactly what the kids say when you ask them what they do online: “I only look at Stories and posts”. Digennaro confirmed that “what emerges is a fairly passive use of content” and precisely that the most common action is to look at photos and stories of famous people. Here there are some distinctions based on gender: girls, in a higher percentage than boys, they spend more time posting and watching content that relates to them and also pay more attention to how they appear in the content they share.
Over 50% of the under 14s surveyed admitted to having edited at least once a photo before posting it, more than 14% do it often, while almost 6% said they always do it, with girls showing a greater propensity to do it than boys: 25.4% against 15.5%. A widespread practice among girls (75% of the interviewees do it, 50% very frequently) is also the habit of taking many photos to choose the best one to share online. Again: 51% of the interviewees confessed to removing any tags from unwanted photos and over 50% send to friends before sharing on social media, against 30% of young people.
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Then there are obviously the filters: if over 50% admitted to using them with the aim of improving their image and about a third to observe how their body might appear, well 42% would like to be in real life as it appears when using filters. According to Digennaro “filters have become tools for making changes on one’s body, for modifying one’s appearance and aligning it with an ideal image of oneself to be projected outside”, a dualism between the real and the imagined that “can modify perception that young people have of themselves. This is confirmed by the fact that to the question “What should the body of your peer be like?”especially girls (42.5%, against 24.8% of boys) have identified the so-called ideal-typical model in an underweight body.
In short, and said in the words of Digennaro: it is understood that “social networks play a decisive role in building reputation of young people”, as is “evident by observing some usage trends which show how approval and social recognition are at the heart of the dynamics with which they display their image”. Platforms are increasingly used “to observe one’s own models, for create and control your own social image, to modify one’s appearance in the desired direction, a habit that can take on the value of a correction, but also of an experimentation” and have become “spaces for the construction of subjectivity”. So they should go well known even by adultsespecially if the children start attending them at 11 years old.
@capoema