Early adolescents as publics: A national survey of teens with social media accounts, their media use preferences, parental mediation, and perceived Internet literacy

• Social media is not necessarily the No. 1 media for reaching early adolescent publics.
• Early adolescents use social media for surveillance more than they use it for posting information, which means posters could be stronger peer influencers.
• Nearly half of early adolescents are checking social media while they are at school and usage increases with the adolescents’ age.
• Early adolescents are using other media while they are using social media meaning they may not have focused attention while using social media.
• Greater parental limits placed on adolescents’ social media use is not associated with less time spent with social media.

This article explores early adolescents’ media channel use to better understand early adolescents as a public relations public. The article offers the results of a national panel survey of early adolescents in sixth to eighth grades (N = 354) who have social media accounts. Our analysis shows that adolescents say that they spend more time with television than they do with social media. In addition, adolescents are more likely to observe what other people post on social media than they are to engage in posting information themselves. Data also indicate that even though parents may place limits on adolescents’ social media use, these limits may drive use of other forms of media and limits are not associated with less social media use compared with adolescents whose parents do not place as many limits on their social media use. Ethical and practical implications for public relations practitioners are offered.