Public relations professionals assist all types of organizations in communicating with audiences, including youth. Today, conventional wisdom assumes that young people lead digital lives and common sense would suggest that the optimal way to engage with early adolescents is through social media (Lenart, 2015; Veinberg, 2015). Recently in the public relations literature, these assumptions have been challenged as public relations scholars have observed that, in general, publics use social media primarily for maintaining personal and professional relationships and hold little intention to interact with organizations (Kent & Saffer, 2014; McCorkindale, DiStaso, & Fussel Sisco, 2013; Vorvoreanu, 2009). It stands to reason that public relations practitioners should thus be concerned with how early adolescents use social media in concert with other media options. The goal of this research is to further our understanding of how social media fits into the repertoire of how early adolescents use media generally for the purpose of informing public relations practitioners who want to reach these youth.

Marketers have always valued youth. Market research data indicate that teens influence $75 billion annually in spending on things like clothing, media and entertainment (Bonetto, 2015). Marketers also believe that the relationships youth have with brands when they are young will translate into maintaining those relationships as youth become adults. While advertisers and marketing researchers have invested in building relationships with youth, research on early adolescents as public relations publics is lacking. This is a clear omission from the literature as public relations practitioners play an important role in the conscience of business and there are a myriad of ethical issues organizations must consider when interacting with early adolescents (Montgomery & Chester, 2009).

To address this scarcity of data in the public relations literature and to better understand this critical public, we present the results of a national nonprobability survey of early adolescents (M = 13.21 years old) who have social media accounts. Our study adds to the literature by providing (1) comparative data on time spent with traditional versus social media, (2) information on the role parents play in their teen’s media use, and (3) comparative analysis of early adolescents based on individual factors and demographics.