When I was a teenager, I was a serial best friender. I always had one best friend who I did everything with and then a larger group of friends we hung out with together. I valued her opinion above all others -- including my parents. As tweens become teens, parents begin to take a backseat to peers, and friends become the all important source of information and validation.

How many of you remember seeing your friends at school, then hanging out after school and then talking on the phone for an hour or more at night? I remember watching a TV show with my friend in one ear on the phone providing a running commentary. The need to stay connected to peers is a natural part of being a teen. The need to stay connected is also stronger for girls than boys since girls tend to be more social, and their friendships are much more intimate. The exception is teen dating relationships where girls and boys will IM, text or MySpace together for hours.

What technology has done is to "power" teen friendships. It's like plugging them in or "crank them up a notch." Suddenly there are many more ways for teens to stay connected. They can instant message or text, and often do even when their friend is in the same room. They can comment on each others blogs or MySpace profiles or share videos and photographs. Instead of having to find a landline to get in touch, they can be in constant contact 24/7. Most of the teens I interviewed for the book drew a distinction between online friends they had never met in person and offline friends who they also corresponded with online. It was rare that they would become friends with complete strangers who didn't share some kind of mutual connection or offline friend in common.

The youth marketing company Alloy recently teamed with the research company Harris Interactive to find out how technology is reshaping teen friendships. What's interested me about the findings were that contrary to the popular perception that teens are so immersed in technology they barely come up for air or to talk to real people, they still prefer face to face interactions. I was also intrigued by how teens who augmented their friendships offline with online interaction reported being closer and staying friends longer than they did with teens they only interacted with "in the real world." Here are some of the findings:

Friends I've Never Met
For many teens, meeting in person is not a prerequisite for being considered a friend. Online connections have provided a socially accepted platform for teens to form friendships. More than one-third of teens (36%) have friends whom they've never met in person, but have only "talked to" online. This is four times the number of tweens who have such friendships (8%). However, most teens use the Internet to augment relationships they have in the "real" world. Nearly nine in ten (87%) have friends whom they talk with both in person and online; this is more than the number of teens who have friends whom they only talk to in person/on the phone (and never "talk to" online) (79%).

Online Status
Friendships that are nurtured in both the "real" and "virtual" worlds define a teen's closest connections, depicting relationships that are more long-standing and intimate than those that are carried out in only one or the other. Nine in ten teens (89%) who have friends that they talk to both in person and online have known them for at least one year, and three-quarters (77%) consider these friends to be extremely or very close. In contrast, friendships that exist only in the "real" world are slightly less likely to be of such long-standing; 82 percent report that they have
known these friends at least a year.

But perhaps of more interest, fewer teens describe "in-person only" friendships as close, compared to those that friends to whom they maintain ties both in person and online. Only half (52%) of teens describe these friendships as extremely or very close. Friendships that exist only online are more recent, and thus not surprisingly, less close. Fifty-one percent of teens who have friends whom they only talk to online say they have known these friends for six months or less, and two-thirds (66%) describe these friendships as not at all or somewhat close. As these data show, even for teens, friendships that exist only online do not trump those with people they know in the "real" world as well.

Virtual Confidants
For some teens communicating online allows them to show more of their true selves. Three in ten teens say they can share more with a friend online (30%) and that they are more honest when they talk to friends online (29%). Online friendships play different roles for teens and tweens. A majority of teens (62%), compared to only 49% of tweens, report that talking to their friends online makes them feel that they are always connected. Online friendships for tweens are as much an emblem of growing up. Half of tweens (52%), versus only 34% of teens, say that talking to their friends online makes them feel cool.

You can read more about this research in here. What's fascinating is how much this departs from the popular media narrative that portrays totally wired teens and the social media they use as not being the same as "real world" friendships when it may actually be deepening these friendships in a whole new way.