Boston-based insurance powerhouse Liberty Mutual recently conducted a national survey of social media users, called the Social Media and Personal Responsibility Benchmark Survey. The premise of the study was to gain more insights into views on cyberbullying and social media as it relates to parenting. The survey was part of the company’s Responsibility Project — a website that just recently took home a 2011 Webby Award — and in line with the company’s mission of “helping people live safer, more secure lives.”

Here are some noteworthy findings from the study are below:

Cyberbullying: Younger and older social media users have slightly differing opinions about who should be responsible for resolving cyberbullying:

• Younger social media users, ages 18-24, are more likely (11%) than others (5%) to think that a child who is being cyberbullied is primarily responsible for resolving his or her own situation.
• Older social media users, ages 65+, are more likely (21%) than others (13%) to think that the teacher is primarily responsible for resolving the cyberbullying.

And overall, the majority of social media users (77%) think that the parent should be responsible for resolving the situation if their child is a victim of cyberbullying by classmates. Furthermore, the majority of social media users (69%) also believe that school authority figures should be doing more to stop cyberbullying.

Parental Friending: A majority of parents whose children have social media accounts are “friends” with their children on Facebook or MySpace (74%), up slightly from 69% in 2010.

Photo Sharing: Though just 38% of parents think it is responsible to post pictures of their children online, 61% of parents admit to posting pictures of their children online.

Location Sharing: While an overwhelming 96% of parents would not allow their children to publicly share their location using geolocation technology, 72% would use geolocation to keep track of their children’s location.

Social Network Usage: Compared to last year, parents are more willing to allow their children to use social networks, but have also increased the monitoring of their children’s social media usage:

• Compared to 2010, parents are much more inclined to allow their children to have a Facebook or MySpace account before the age of 18 (80% in 2011 vs. only 69% in 2010). The number of parents who say they would allow their child to have a social media account between the ages of 10-12 doubled from 2010 to 2011, despite the fact that social networks like Facebook require a user to be at least 13 years of age to sign up.
• However, only one in five (17%) parents would allow their child under age 18 to own a Facebook or MySpace account without monitoring their child’s account. Three in five parents (59%) say children should be 18 years old before they are allowed to keep their Facebook or MySpace account to themselves without parental monitoring.

Note: This survey by Liberty Mutual was first conducted in 2010. This year’s 2011 results will be released in three installments, with the initial data above being the first.

What data point stands out to you most?