But do we really have any idea what its doing to them . Do you know the secret language theyre speaking to each other that they dont want their parents or 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 kids say online might shock you. Remember, theyre only 13, but we thought it was important to show you all unfiltered. And for the next hour were taking you here inside the secret world of teens. Millions of tweets, comments, picture, post, likes, hashtags, videos, a steady stream of social media activity and all constantly at the tinger tips of 13yearolds across america. The volume of internet noise can be overwhelming. Aechb indecipherable to adults. How to crack the code . We went directly to the source. 13yearold themselves. We met with kids across the koun tr tri from cities, suburbs and small towns and they gave our experts access to their social media feeds in real time. With permission of their parents and their schools, teens registered their instagram, twitter and Facebook Accounts through a secure private server that stored everything they posted over six months. From mean comment dooshs. Sweetie, i success you stop being a bitch about it. To serious ones. You ear about to get your [ bleep ] ass kicked. To supportive messages. Youre my best friend and i trust you with anything. To nasty ones. You dirty bitch, dirty bitch. 150,000 pieces of a very complicated puzzle, seen, stored and analyzed by our team of academics. This groundbreaking 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 renowned child clinical psychologist Marion Underwood and dr. Robert faris. Teens answered survey questions like how often have you gotten into a conflict with someone on social media . Have you posted something on social media 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 . What our experts discovered might completely change what you think its like being 13. 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 this study told us they check their feeds more than 100 times a day. Sometimes ill catch myself like going on my social media way too much. About 200 times in a day. We asked about 20 teens in our study to send us videos responding to questions about the power of social media in their lives. The most times i check it in a day, i lose track. Its just a need, like i have to. I probably check my phone 90, 100. Even when im hanging out with people, i still check my phone a lot. The one thing i dont want to do is miss out on something. I think i checked it about 100 times at school before. Ill whip it out in the middle of class and wonder, what else is everybody else up to . Why check over 100 times a day . They are worried about fitting in. 21 say i want to make sure no one is saying mean things about me. 36 say i want to see if my friends are doing things without me. 61 say i want to see if my posts are getting likes and comments. I would still check my phone because people post things at school and stuff. You still always worry. Clinical psychologist dr. Marion underwood is the coauthor of the study. Its stressful to constantly be monitoring and worrying about what people how people might have responded to what you put online. This age group has a lot of anxiety about where they fit in, how they rank, what their peer status is. They dont just get online to see how many likes or favorites they got. Theyre comparing their numbers to other peoples numbers. Some kids even buy likes and followers. Yes, theres an app for that, too. Why do they do it . Think of social media as a popularity barometer. How do kids boost their status . Our study found it was bullying or social aggression that did the trick. Sometimes the aggression is hidden or covert and sometimes its right there in your face. Go die. Stop trying to be popular. Holy [ bleep ], youre ugly. Were going to come for your life. You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. Get to a [ bleep ] point where i just want to burn bodies. And those are some of the tamer posts we can actually 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 to remove themselves emotionally from what they say. In fact, most told us they say things on social media theyd never say face to face. I dont like dealing with things face to face because its really easy to hide behind your phone and 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 cyberbullied who faked social media accounts. They wanted an Instagram Page and they made a fake account. And they just scroll through every single 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 theyre 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 ever recognize the weapons. Some attacks are cleverly cloaked through whats called 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 cyberworld 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 send her across a bridge. Then sins of omission. Intentionally excluding peers just to hurt them. One favorite technique is not to tag the name of a friend on a photo. Take a group photo on instagram. Everyone looks like theyre having a good time but look deeper. All the teens are tagged except one. A simple mistake . Dont bet on it. Not everyone in a group photo gets tagged because sometimes you dont like a person in the group so youre just like, no, i aint tagging you. 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 or nothing. Youre popular, in, cool. Or youre nothing. Youre trash. Youre left out. Youre excluded. They 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. Its often many of those same kids that retaliate. More than onethird in this study admitted they purposely exclude others as well. Its really powerful form of aggression because its so subtle that its considered bad form to respond. So lots of us have experienced the pain of it. Many who do it are doing it for the purpose of hurting others but they can do it with the full expectation theyll 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. 360s other expert dr. Robert faris calls all of this social combat. To play the popularity game effectively, some kids believe they need to engage in some hard ball. And i think they do things deliberately to make their rivals in particular who are often their friends feel pretty 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 that the line between the real world and the cyberworld no longer exists for kids in middle school. You heard that right. The line between the real world and cyberworld no longer exists for kids in middle school. In fact, what happens online sometimes matters even more to them than what happens in real life. Why . Well, the simple answer is there are more witnesses. Thats why our next topic is so important. Kids as young as 13 exposes to sexting and revenge porn and what thats doing to their Mental Health coming up on being 13 inside the secret world of teens. Obsters ultimae seafood celebration. With jazzed up new dishes like the decadent grand seafood feast and the ultimate woodgrilled feast why wait to celebrate . So hurry in, it ends soon. Why should over two hundred years of citi history matter to you . Well, because it tells us something powerful about progress that whether times are good or bad, people and their ideas will continue to move the world forward. As long as they have someone to believe in them. Citi financed the transatlantic cable that connected continents. And the panama canal, that made our world a smaller place. We backed the Marshall Plan that helped europe regain its strength. And pioneered the atm, for cash, anytime. For over two centuries weve supported dreams like these, and the people and companies behind them. So why should that matter to you . Because, today, we are still helping progress makers turn their ideas into reality. And the next great idea could be yours. And this year, look at whate he put in our driveway. The lexus december to remember sales event is here. Lease the 2016 es350 for 349 a month for 36 months and well make your first months payment. See your lexus dealer. At ally bank no branches equalsits a fact. Kind of like mute buttons equal danger. That sound good . Not being on this phone call sounds good. Its not muted. Was that you jason . It was geoffrey it was jason. It couldve been brenda. When i went on to ancestry, i just put in the name yes, we are twins. Of my parents and my grandparents. I was getting all these leaves and i was going back generation after generation. You start to see documents and you see signatures of people that youve never met. I mean, you dont know these people, but you feel like you do. You get connected to them. I wish that i could get into a time machine and go back 100 years, 200 years and just meet these people. Being on ancestry just made me feel like i belonged somewhere. Discover your story. Start searching for free now at ancestry. Com. Welcome back to being 13. Inside the secret world of teens. Time to talk about sex and your teens. Specifically, what our study found theyre exposed to when using social media. I want to warn you, 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 dick pic 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 our study. Receiving these pictures is upsetting, especially at such a young age. Its illegal, worrisome, scary, 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 exboyfriend 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, which is very intense and difficult at this age, unfortunately, they are likely to use social media to get back to the person by sharing inappropriate pictures. Unfortunately, that is 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 scroll through their 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 ]. Hot69. 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 middle schoolers in this study, 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 they regularly create fake online profiles to groom unsuspecting verdicts. For a Certain Group of young people, 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 Pastime 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, constantly scrolling through photos that are more like glammed up fashion shoots more 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 leads a lot of parents to ask 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. For example, what some kids said about losing phone privileges sounded a lot like an addict suffering from withdrawal. 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 like 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 cyberworld. We see a lot of evidence of, if not out right addiction to social media, heavy dependence on it and almost a compulsive need to be checking social media. We have very high rates of kids being anxious, worried they are missing out on what their friends are doing online. 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 try to control their kids social media use. But our study found they have limited success. Whats more, parents were way out of touch with what their kids were feeling. About 60 underestimated how lonely, worried or depressed their kids were, and 94 under estimated the amount of fighting going on. What is going on is two things. One is that the language of social media, the subtleties of exclusion and social combat are indecipherable 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 parents. 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 doing online mitigated the negative effects of their kids experiencing conflict with their peers. Parent monitoring effectively erased the negative 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. I am thankful to have the most amazing best friend ever. Friends standing up for each other. Dont listen to them. They are clearly jealous of you because youre an amazing person. And out of 150,000 posts, a lot of it is just kids being kids. Happy birthday. Im in my bed listening to beyonce. What can i say, never a bad time to listen to beyonce. Social media is positive for a lot of 13yearolds. Its a way to connect with friends and see what people are doing and a way for them to feel affirmed, supported, 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 of the studys 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. Yea, its nespresso. I want in. Youre ready. Get ready to experience a cup above. Is that coffee . Nespresso. What else . Some of these experimentsere notmay not work. Il. But a few might shape the future. Like turning algae into biofuel. 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