9. Do you have friends online that you have never met in person? (Include Gaming.)
27.1% of all students (N=2488) report having a friend online whom they have never met in person, up from our 16.7% from the 2008 - 2009 academic year. Boys were more likely to report such online friends (31.8%; N=1079) than girls (27.7%; N=1300), a statistically significant difference.
[Figure 12: Grade level comparison of students who report having online friends whom they have never met in person, including online gaming.]
[Figure 13: Percent of boys versus percent of girls who report having online friends whom they have never met in person, including online gaming.]
Students report making friends in many places, and via many methods, across the Internet. The most common places and methods for making virtual friends were children's social networking sites such as Club Penguin and WebKinz, adult social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, through a "friend of a friend", and through online gaming via gaming sites such as Runescape, and using the Playstation 3 or Xbox Live. Other less common methods and locations included the following:
| ChatRoulette.com | Online blogs/forums | Omegle.com |
| YouTube | ||
| Instant Messaging | Skype | Tumblr.com |
[Figure 14: Comparative graph that groups where online students said they met their virtual friends.]
To Question 10. During the last few months, have you felt uncomfortable, hurt or scared online from something that you saw, something that happened to you or something someone said to you?