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Teenagers use sites such as Facebook and Myspace to explore their own identities and manifest an 'ideal' version of themselves. The claims come from a team at the Children's Digital Media Center at UCLA (CDMCLA), who claim that this phenomenon helps young people to become the type of person they would like to be perceived as.

"People can use these sites to explore who they are by posting particular images, pictures or text, and we're always engaging in self-presentation; we're always trying to put our best foot forward," said UCLA psychology graduate student Adriana Manago.

Social networking sites take this concept to a new level, where you can alter what you look like, using image editing software. Manago said that the sites intensify your ability to present yourself in a positive light, explore different aspects of your personality and how you present yourself.

"You can try on different things, possible identities, and explore in a way that is common for emerging adulthood," she said. "It becomes psychologically real. People put up something that they would like to become - not completely different from who they are but maybe a little different - and the more it gets reflected off on others, the more it may be integrated into their sense of self, as they share words and photos with so many people."

The psychologists said that social networking sites can be used as a tool for self-development,

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allowing users to open free accounts and to communicate with other up to tens of millions of Facebook or MySpace users. The teams claims that many university students in the US have 1,000 or more friends on Facebook or MySpace network, where identity, romantic relations and sexuality are all explored.

"All of these things are what teenagers always do, but the social networking sites give them much more power to do it in a more extreme way," said Patricia Greenfield, professor at CDMCLA. "In the arena of identity formation, this makes people more individualistic and more narcissistic; people sculpt themselves with their profiles."

Greenfield expressed particular concern in the arena of peer relations, claiming that the meaning of 'friends' has been so altered that real friends are not going to be recognised as such.

"How many of your 1,000 'friends' do you see in person? How many are just distant acquaintances? How many have you never met?" she said.

Manago added: "Instead of connecting with friends with whom you have close ties for the sake of the exchange itself, people interact with their 'friends' as a performance, as if on a stage before an audience of people on the network."

The psychologists acknowledged every medium has its strengths and weaknesses; its psychological costs and benefits. In the case of social networking sites, costs may be the devaluing of real friendships and the reduction of face-to-face interaction. There are more relationships, but also more superficial relationships. Empathy and other human qualities may get reduced because of less face-to-face contact.

However, the team also noted that new students can make contact with their future roommates and easily stay in touch with friends from their old schools too, easing the social transition from school to college, university or the workplace.

The team's study was based on small focus groups with a total of 11 women and 12 men, all UCLA students who use MySpace frequently.