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The teenage love affair with Facebook may be over — or maybe it was all a myth to begin with, judging by new research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

A report released this week titled “Teens, Social Media, and Privacy” suggests that teenagers tolerate Facebook as an annoying social necessity. Pew’s research team found that while an overwhelming majority (77 percent) of American teens still use Facebook, they see it as a hassle because it has so many adults, so much trivial information and a surplus of “drama.”

The report is full of other interesting factoids about teenage social media habits. Their use of Twitter, for example, is up sharply from the last survey, and teenagers seem very comfortable adjusting their privacy settings nowadays.

View a summary of the Pew report on teenagers and social networking.

Google made a splash in social medialand last week with a string of announcements at its annual I/O developer conference. A few highlights:

1) Google Hangouts — Google announced plans to merge its disparate existing messaging and chat services into a single new one called Google Hangouts. The new messenger works across multiple mobile platforms, not just Google’s own Android operating system. It is designed to replace several of the company’s existing communication services, including Google Talk, GChat and Google+ Messenger. To start, Hangouts is available for Apple’s iOS devices as well as Google’s Android, the Chrome Web browser and Gmail. More about Google Hangouts.

2) Google+ Redesign — The Internet search giant redesigned and added more than 40 features to Google+, its social networking service. Enhancements include automatic generation of hashtags (based on the content of a post) and automatic improvements to photos, including enhanced lighting, colors and the ability to group related images together. Dubbed “auto-awesome,” the photo-enhancing tool also can combine images to automatically generate animated GIFs. How nifty is that?

3) Google Music All Access — Grabbing the spotlight was a premium streaming music subscription service that debuted at the conference called Google Play Music All Access. It costs $9.99 a month and provides personalized streaming radio that includes millions of songs, curated playlists, unlimited listening and better music browsing tools than those available from Google’s existing free music service.

Comedy Central is launching a 24/7 channel on SiriusXM Satellite Radio which will feature contemporary comedians you know and up-and-coming comics who are hot on the comedy circuit. In addition, the new Comedy Central Radio will offer selected archived audio from the Comedy Central library. Tom Petty is also getting his own 24/7 Internet stream based on his weekly SiriusXM show, Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure. Read more. (Photo: by MusicIsEntropy, Creative Commons license)

SiriusXM Satellite Radio seems to have pioneered the idea of “limited Run” radio formats. Launching today is Tom Petty Radio which will be heard on Channel 111 until May 30. Expect to hear Petty’s music as well as The Traveling Wilburys and Mudcrutch, his first band. (Photo: Tom Petty in Concert 2010, by MusicIsEntropy, Creative Commons License)

Then, beginning on June 1, SiriusXM will roll out Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure to be heard 24/7 channel on SiriusXM.com, channel 714 and connected devices that stream SiriusXM Internet Radio.

Tom Petty’s Buried Treasures has been previously heard as a weekly show on the service.

For more information, visit TomPetty.com.

Looks like Yahoo wants a serious piece of what Tumblr’s got goin’ on. According to a report from All Things D, the young and hip blogging service could be purchased by Yahoo for as much as $1 billion.

• 10 crazy Tumblr blogs to follow

Yahoo has had its fair share of problems to deal with over the past few years, and maintaining its “cool” factor has been a big one. The struggling search engine and web portal site hasn’t quite been able to cracke the code when it comes to the youth demographic, so Tumblr’s loyal 18 to 24 year-old userbase looks like an attractive buy at the moment.

Tumblr, however, has had its own set up problems to deal with. The blogging service gets a big chunk of its traffic from the hoards of stolen, copyright-violated content and porn that its users continue to post. And even though advertisements were launched on its mobile apps just last month, a solid revenue generation strategy that actually works has yet to be developed.

But who knows, maybe Yahoo’s much more established advertising team could give Tumblr the push it really needs to make more money, all the while strengthening Yahoo’s ability to target and hold on to a larger chunk of the youth demographic. If the acquisition rumors live up to the hype and a $1-billion deal is eventually reached, it would be comparable to the Facebook-Tumblr acquisition that was made last year.

• Where to find free Tumblr themes

Most seasoned Internet users can easily recognize that Tumblr is basically the complete opposite of what Yahoo is right now, but Yahoo apparently really, really wants it, and the company is ready to step up its startup buying game to get just what it wants.

We’ll be keeping an eye out on this one. Stay tuned, friends.

Photo © Getty Images

Google’s sixth annual I/O Developer Conference was held today, and now that the three hour-long event is over, it’s pretty safe to say that there’s a lot to take in from what was announced.

To help bring you up to speed, here’s a short list of some of the biggest key developments we can expect to see from Google. If you’d like to know more about each announcement, I’ve provided a few links that should give you more detailed information.

Google’s new music streaming service, Google Play Music All Acces, goes live today.

• Launching today in the U.S. to compete with streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora, users will be able to enjoy a comparable music streaming experience on the web and on Android for $9.99 per month.
• Click here for more about Google Play Music All Access.

Google+ is getting a huge makeover.

• Google’s very own social network is getting a whopping 41 new features today, including a fresher design to highlight visual content, Hangout features, photo-editing tools and more.
• A brand new multi-column layout will go live today, and the news stream will eventually get a Pinterest-like facelift that will be sure to please photo lovers across the social network.
• You also now get 15 GB of full-size storage for photos, along with a great new Auto Awesome feature for automatic photo combining feature and to create GIFs.
• Click here for more about Google+ photos.

The new “Hangouts” cross-platform messaging system offers better opportunities for communication.

• Available to download for iOS, Android and Chrome, the new Hangouts app goes live today to let users messages each other across its mobile apps, Gmail and Google+.
• Click here for more about the new Hangouts app.

Google Maps will get a massive overhaul on the web and on mobile, with emphasis on personalization and location discovery.

• As predicted, Google Maps is swapping out its left sidebar for features that are instead built directly into the full screen map.
• Google Earth, Street View and project imagery will be integrated with Google Maps for better accessibility.
• A brand new iOS and Android app will be coming, along with an iPad app later this summer.
• The new Google Maps will use Google Now sources to suggest venues you’ve been to already, related places and even places that your Google+ friends have visited.
• Click here for more about the new Google Maps.

And there you have it. Those are the big new changes that most of us regular Internet users can expect to see. There were a few other things that were also announced, like a customized version of the new Samsung Galaxy S4 and new developer services on Google Play.

You can check out The Next Web’s roundup, Lifehacker Australia’s roundup or T3′s roundup to get the full scoop on some of the other announcements in addition to the big ones that were summarized above.

Photo © Getty Images

Google’s latest Easter Egg is here, and it’s a fun one. Or at least, it’s a heck of a lot less obnoxious than that crazy YouTube Harlem Shake Easter Egg we saw a couple months ago.

In commemeration of the 37th anniversary of the Atari Breakout arcade video game, Google has hidden a new mini game in its image search. It can only be triggered when you Google image search “Atari Breakout.” Go ahead and give it a try.

Seasoned gamers: prepare yourselves. Because it’s time to get straight down to business and pwn some serious rainbow-tinted images blocks.

• Are these trends slowly closing the gap between the Internet and real life?

Photo: Screenshot of Google Image Search