Teachers to understand . We spent the last two years looking for answers in a first of its kind investigation. We want to warn you what we found that kids say online may shock you, especially when you remember they are only 13 but we i think its important to show you it all unfiltered and for the next hour, were taking you here, inside the secret world of teens. Millions of tweets, comments, pictures, posts, likes, hashtags, videos, a steady stream of social media activity and all constantly at the fingertips of 13yearolds across america. The volume of internet noise can be overwhelming and not understandable to adults in social media so how to crack the code . 360 went to the source, 13yearolds themselves. We signed up hundreds of eighth graders at eight different schools across the country from cities, suburbs and small towns and gave our team of experts access to their social media feeds in realtime. With the permission of their parents and schools, teens registered their instagram, twitter and Facebook Accounts through a secure private server that stored everything they posted over six months. From mean comments. Sweetie i suggest you stop being a bitch about it. On a serious level youre about to get your [ bleep ] kicked. Supportive messages. Youre one of my best friends and i trust you with everything. God you dirty, you dirty, you dirty. They went into the vault, more than 150,000 posts in all, 150,000 pieces of a very complicated puzzle seen, stored and analyzed by our team of academics. In Ground Breaking cnn investigation is the first major study to look at what kids actually say on social media and why it matters so much to them designed by marry Ann Underwood and robert ferris, teens also answered survey questions like how often have you gotten into a conflict with someone on social media . Have you posted something on social media that you later regretted . Whats the best thing thats happened to you on social media . How often do you worry youre missing out on what your friends are doing online . Our experts discovered might completely change when you think its like being 13. [ laughter ] the first headline, the more teens look at social media, the more distressed they can become. Teens check their social media feeds way more than they actually post something. Our experts call it lurking. And the heaviest users in the study told us they check their feeds more than 10 0 times a da. Sometimes ill catch myself going on social media way too much about 200 times in a day. We asked about 20 teens to send us videos responding to questions about the power of social media and their lives. The most times i check it in a day, i lose track. Its just a need i have like i need to. I probably check my phone 90, 100, 110. Even when im hanging out with people, the one thing i want to do is miss out on something. I checked it about 100 times at school before. Ill whip it out in the middle of class like wonder what everybody else is up to . Why check over 100 times a day . Even during school . They are really worried about fitting in. 21 say. I want to make sure no one is saying mean things about me. 36 . I want to see if my friends are doing things without me. And 61 say. I want to see if my posts are getting likes and comments. Even though i was at school, i would still check my phone because people post things at school and stuff so you still always worry. Clinical psychologist dr. Mary ann under wood is the sponsor of the study. Its stressful to see what people responded to what you put online. This is an age group with answer psi tu how they fit in, how they rank and their peer status. They dont get online to see how many likes or favorites but comparing their numbers to other peoples numbers. Some kids even buy likes and followers, yes, there is an app for that, too, why do they do it . Think of social media as a popularity barometer, how do kids really boost their status . Our study found it was actually bullying or social aggression that did the trick. Sometimes the aggression is hidden or covert and sometimes right there in your face. Go die. Stop trying to be popular. Holy [ bleep ] youre ugly. Boy, you better come for your life. Mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. I really get to a [ bleep ] point where i just want to burn bodies. Those are tamer posts we can show on television. Remember, these are all from 13yearolds. How can they talk to each other like that you might ask . The answer is complicated. Because the communication is done digitally, teens are able to remove themselves emotionally from what they say, in fact, most told us that they say things on social media they would never say facetoface. I dont like dealing with things facetoface because its really easy to hide behind your phone and in face on facetoface, like you have to deal with the other person and i dont like dealing with people that cry or get really mad and they Say Something mean back to me and ill lose and i dont like losing. Some even had Horror Stories of friends cyber bullied through fake social media accounts. One instagram page, they made a fake account and they just scrolled through every one of her photos and commented something rude. No human should be able to say such rude things to someone. Especially behind a screen where they are being cowards. Direct aggression hurts but covert aggression, according to our experts, can hurt even deeper. Our study found that sites like instagram and twitter are the new front lines in this hidden warfare and parents hardly recognize the weapons. Some attacks are clevererly cloaked through subtweeting. A subtweet is when someone talks about somebody else through twitter but without actually saying the names. Teens beat up on a classmate in the cyber World Without including their twitter handle, even though in the real world, everyone knows who they are referring to. Im so done trying to get along with you. I really want to choke that girl and sling her across a bridge. Then there is what our experts call sins of omission, intentionally excludeing peers to hurt them. One favorite technique is not tag the name of friend on a photo. Take a group photo on instagram. Everybody likes look they have having a great time, right . All the teens are tagged except for one, a simple mistake, dont bet on it. Not everyone in a group photo gets tagged. Because sometimes you dont like the person in the group so youre just like, no, i aint tagging you. So even when youre invited to a party in real life, you can still get kicked out of it on social media. For a lot of 13yearolds, they really have one social group and if they are left out of that one group, that feels devastating. They also view it as all of nothing. Youre popular, youre in, youre cool or youre nothing. Youre trash. Youre left out. Youre excluded and feel like it will last forever. Do people ever post photos to make people feel left out on purpose . Yes. That actually happens a lot. Nearly half of the teens in this study said they felt purposely excluded by friends online but often many of those same kids that retaliate, more than onethird in this study admitted they purposely exclude others, as well. Its a really powerful form of aggression because its so subtle that its considered bad form to respond. So lots of kids have experienced the pain of it. Many who do it are doing it for the purpose of hurting others but can do it with the full expectation they will not pay one single social consequence. Our study found the biggest source of online conflict for middle schoolers is their friends, not strangers, not kids from a rival click, their biggest source of pain is from those closest to them. 360 ea 360s other experts calls this social combat. To play the popularity game effectively, some kids believe they need to engage in some hardball and i think they do things deliberately to make their rivals and particular who are often their friends feel bad. Those bad feelings that humiliation which comes from bullying and social combat is only intensified on social media where everyone is watching all the time. In fact, our study found the line between the real world and cyber world no longer exists for kids in middle school. You heard that right, the line between the real world and cyber world no longer exists for kids in middle school. What happens online sometimes matters even more to them than what happens in real life. Why . The answer is there are more witnesses and thats why the next top pick top pick is importa important. Coming up next on being 13 inside the secret world of teens. You have two choices; the easy way or the hard way. You could choose a card that limits where you earn bonus cash back. Or, you could make things easier on yourself. Thats right, the quicksilver card from capital one. With quicksilver you earn unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase, everywhere. So, lets try this again. Whats in your wallet . Irresistible moments. Deserve irresistibles treats. New from meow mix, with real salmon, chicken or tuna. The only treat cats ask for by name. Decisions, decisions. The new edge . This one would keep me organized. I could list all the days ive been banned from social media. Hmmm, wait this thing has builtin live broadcasting . I dont know what nerd came up with that, but its awesome. You think theyd censor pippas doggyolas . Censored, not censored. Censored, not censored. Introducing the Samsung Galaxy s6 edge and the note5. Welcome back to being 13. Time to talk about sex and your teens, what our study found they are exposed to when using social media. Some of what you hear might shock you considering these kids are only 13 years old. I always tell them, im like if you send me a [ bleep ] pick i will slice it off. This study found kids as young as 13 are exposed to the darker sexualized side of the internet. I was like walking out of the store with my mom and looked down at my phone and there is this wiener and i was like mom 15 of middle schoolers admitted they received inappropriate photos, the damage lasts long after the photo is deleted. These kids were almost 50 more distressed than others in the study. Receiving these pictures is upsetting at a young age. Its illegal, worrisome, dangerous, loaded if you tell an adult, everybody will get in a lot of trouble. So i think it puts them in a really tough position. Just like in the adult world, sometimes middle schoolers use these sexualized photos for revenge. What they like to call it is exposing, its either like an exgirlfriend or boyfriend and what they do is post naked pictures and nudes of the person and sharing the stuff supposed to be kept private between the two and really shouldnt have happened in the first place but it did and now they are spreading it. Remember, these kids are only 13. When they are hurt, when they are furious, when they go through a breakup, unfortuna unfortunately, they are likely to use social media to get back to the person by sharing inappropriate pictures. Unfortunately, that the just perfect ammunition. Many middle schoolers we spoke to said their parents warned them about the dangers of inappropriate photos and say their parents warned them to watch out for online predators. We asked our group of 13yearolds to school through followers and look for strangers. A lot of people follow me that i do not know. Here is this one person, i think hes a fake account. His user name is [ bleep ]. Hot 69. Anyway, i think hes fake. Hes not even that cute. But i have absolutely no idea who that is. Lets look a little more closely at that. This Instagram User says hes 18. Following a 13yearold girl. There is actually a lot of people i have no idea who they are but i just let them follow me because the more, the merrier. Gabby like many mid schoolers shares a lot of her life on social media, sometimes even more than she realizes. Take a look at this instagram post, she wants to show her friends shes tanning at a lake. Seems innocent enough but any follower who clicks on this photo can pinpoint exactly where she is. Thats because of the locator function that she didnt even know was turned on. According to the fbi, there are more than half a million sexual predators online every single day in america and regularly create fake online profiles to groom unsuspecting verdicts. For a group they want to attract as many as possible. They wont be discriminating. Unfortunately, they dont have that entire cast of thousands in mind with everything they post. Other potential hazards of posting photos are not obvious to adults. Take selfies, the art of the selfie has become the National Past time for americas teens and there are rules. Lots and lots of them. Do you feel confident . Is the outfit amazing or do you feel really pretty or on point that day . Add different faces like duck face or smiling. Sometimes you share like this, sometimes like this. I specialize in this. I like made this google document of all my rules and requirements on how to take a selfie. So then when i take the selfies, i just scroll through and just see the ones that i want. The goal is to make yourself look the best you can because its kind of for insecure people because you dont feel good about yourself. I take a lot of pictures. Dont judge. I take like 100 pictures usually or like 150. Maybe 200 sometimes if im really cant get the right one. There it is. All of these rules come with a price for an age group thats incredibly selfconscious about their looks scrolling through photos that are more like glammed up fashion shoots than snapshots from middle school can make being 13 even harder. I definitely feel pressure to look perfect on instagram. What goes through my mind as i post a picture of myself, im thinking, you know, like what will people think of this . Are they going to approve . Are they going to think im ugly . Are they going to think im pretty. Im thinking all these things and comparing myself to others. And those anxious feelings comparing themselves to others and the constant need to check their status leaves a lot of parents to answer a simple question, is my child addicted to their phone . Addicted to social media . Our study found it does have some hallmarks of clinical addiction. What some kids said about losing phone privileges sounded a lot like an addict suffering from withdraw. I literally feel like im going to die. I would rather not eat for a week than get my phone taken away. Its really bad. When i get my phone taken away, i feel kind of naked. I do feel like kind of empty without my phone. I hate whenever i get my phone taken away. It is the worst thing you can ever do to me. Makes me so mad. I just want to rip my hair out. 57 of kids in this study said they would rather be grounded than lose their phone. Meaning if they had to choose, they would rather be cut off from the real world than the cyber world. We see a lot of evidence of if not out right addiction to social media, heavy dependence on it and need to check it. They are worried they are missing out. Beyond that, they are addicted to the image of themselves that they see reflected in the eyes of their peers. The majority of parents said they tried to control their kids social media use. But our study found they have limited success. Parents were way out of touch with what their kids were feeling. About 60 under estimated how lonely or depresed their kids were and 94 perce under estimae amount of fighting. What is going on is two things, one is that the language of social media, the subtleties of exclusion and social combat are indesafeble for parents. The other thing is kids by and large dont talk about the kinds of conflicts they are experiencing because they feel like adults cant help. Despite that finding, the data shows something remarkably empowering for parent, even if they feel they cant control their middle schoolers social media use even if they dont understand a lot of what is being said online, just trying really counts. Making an effort to monitor what your kids are dog online mid gated the effect of kids experiencing conflict. Parent monitoring effectively erase the effects of online conflicts. Friends ease each others pain. Thats right 13yearolds stab each other in the back but we also saw thousands of posts of love and support. Friend s standing up for aeach other. Youre an amazing person. Out of 150,000 posts. Happy birthday. What can i say, never a bad time to listen to beyonce say. Social media is positive for a lot of 13yearolds. Its a way to connect with friends and see what people are doing and feel a firm support lifted up. There is nothing about the technology that means it has to be bad. Unfortunately, there is the occasional hurtful comment and painful experience of an exclusion that i think looms large for most of them. Up next, ill talk to some studies most plugged in teens about how quickly a single post can change their entire reputation. And later, ill get their parents take on what their kids are doing online all coming up on being 13, inside the secret world of teens. Become the only thing you think about. Thats where at t can help. At at t we monitor our Network Traffic so we can see things others cant. Mitigating risks across your business. Leaving you free to focus on what matters most. Im a gas service my nrepresentative. N. Ive been with pg e nine years. As an employee of pg e you always put your best foot forward to provide reliable and safe service and be able to help the community. We always have the safety of our customers and the community in mind. My family is in oakland, my wifes family is in oakland so this is home to us. Being able to work in the community that i grew up in, customers feel like friends, neighbors and it makes it a little bit more special. Together, were building a better california. Its gotten squarer. Over the years. Brighter. Bigger. Its gotten thinner. Even curvier. But whats next . For all binge watchers. Movie geeks. Sports freaks. X1 from xfinity will change the way you experience tv. Welcome back to the cnn special report. Were showing you what your kids are seeing, doing and saying on social media. Some may have surprised you and you may be asking yourself, how can 13yearolds act like that . We sat down with them and asked. We invited eight kids from more than 2000 in t in the study to about social media. One thing that came up in our conversation was the takers of sexting. They post private pictures of the other, their ex, these pictures are, well, they are naked pictures. So we played what morgan had to say in her video to the whole group. Were sharing this stuff that was supposed to be kept private between the two and really shouldnt have happened in the first place but it did and now they are spreading it. Does that happen do all of you know about this . That happens, thats pretty common. That happens. It happened to whats her name . This one girl actually sent nudes to a guy like at a different school, and it wasnt even at our school and that guy sent it to our kids at our school. Three kids got expelled, she got arrested. Couple got suspended. Stuff like that. What kind of an impact, does that make you think about what you send out . Definitely. Yeah. Like a reality check. So you, at the time youre not even thinking about it and then when someone else does it and get in troubl