Survey: 29% of Teens Want to Unfriend Parents on Facebook

Posted on August 24, 2010

A new AOL survey, conducted by The Nielsen Company, reveals the challenges of modern day parenting in a world with social networking. Over half of the children surveyed (54%) don't personally know all of the friends they have accepted into their social network. While 76% of parents with kids on Facebook, claim to have friended their teens, 29% of teenagers are ready to un-friend their parents given the choice, and are twice as likely to want to un-friend mom versus dad.

Here is a list of the study's highlights:

54% of teens don't know personally all of their Facebook friends
76% of parents with kids on Facebook have friended their teens
29% of teens would unfriend a parent if given the choice
Teen are twice likely to want to un-friend Mom versus Dad
33% of parents feel they are mostly on top of things, but worry they aren't seeing everything
18% feel that it is tricky and too time consuming to keep up.
41% of parents say they know half or less than half of their children's online friends.

AOL today released a new product called Safe Social, a tool that provides parents a 360 degree view of their child's social networking life. Safe Social requires up-front consent from the child. AOL think some kids will prefer being monitored with Safe Social, as opposed to have parents follow them directly on Facebook or Twitter.