Friends? Yes, and mean kids, too

Teens are waking up to the fact that their Facebook friends aren't necessarily their real friends. Sometimes, those online acquaintances can be bullies or braggarts worth tuning out.

A new report from Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan research center in Washington D.C., finds interest in Facebook waning among adolescents. A national survey of teens found that they're less excited about Facebook than a few years back.

In small focus groups, teens also said they disliked the increasing number of adults on the site, got annoyed when their Facebook friends shared inane details, and felt drained by the "drama" they described as happening frequently online.

According to Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew, "many teens, almost nine in ten teens, witness people being mean to each other, or cruel to each other, in these social media spaces. Overall, the most popular response is that they ignore people in these spaces."

Calvin Leitch Lodge isn't surprised by focus group results showing a waning interest in Facebook among teens. He's over it, too.

"I just felt like I was wasting my time … I felt like real friends aren't in a computer; they're in real life," said Lodge, 19, of Minneapolis. "So on Facebook, it says I've got like, 700 friends. But I do not have 700 friends."

Here are some of the common pitfalls for young people who use Facebook and other social media:

There's the typical story: A girl posts on social media how mad she is at someone, leaving her friends and followers to scratch their heads, wondering what could have possibly upset her. She goes to school the next day and gets in a fight with a classmate who stole her boyfriend.

Shayla Thiel-Stern, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who has researched youth and digital media, said, "[teens] might say something online that they would not say in a face-to-face situation, and I think that is where drama can ensue."

Maddie Bodell, 15, of Plymouth, is tired of vague tweets and Facebook updates that are seemingly aimed at the world, but could be targeted to a specific person.

"[With] indirect tweet[s], people say things, but they don't say who they're saying it to. 'Oh, I really wish you wouldn't do that anymore,' and not say who they're talking about," she said.

With the option of adding hashtags, anybody can make a post about how upset they are, and add the hashtag "wannacry" or "I'mSoSad," etc. These types of posts leave followers speculating about the reason why this person is upset. Since no names are mentioned, teens can become defensive, thinking that the post is written about them, Bodell said.

Having a lot of friends is a key priority for teens because it conveys that they're "popular" and "social," Lenhart said.

"Likes specifically seem to be a strong proxy for social status, such that teen Facebook users will manipulate their profile and timeline content in order to garner the maximum number of 'likes', and remove photos with too few 'likes,' " she said.

There's a sense of security that comes along with being behind a computer screen vs. saying mean words to someone's face.

"Well, it's like over the Internet, people feel like they can say anything because they're just typing into a keyboard. They're not really saying it to somebody's face," Lodge said. "So people can say a lot more negative things and feel more comfortable with it because they're not actually face-to-face."

Jason Davis, 14, of Minneapolis, was confused when a teen he didn't know tried to bully him into a fight.