Connected Generation. Young people and social networks: Outline

According to boyd and Ellison’s definitive 2007 article, the first online social network service (SNS) emerged in 1997, but it is only in the last five years that social networks have made it from obscurity to become a ubiquitous part of many people’s online, and offline, day to day experience. With 2 billion people predicted to be connected to the Internet by the end of 2010, Facebook now has over 500 million registered users from right across the globe.3 2.1 million new Twitter accounts are registered every week, and regional, local and niche social network services and social media sites are being launched and are growing daily.