Chicago – A new survey concludes that the Internet has all but saturated the youth market.
The report compiled for the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly nine out of 10 young people, ages 12 to 17, have online access – up from about three-quarters of young people in 2000.
By comparison, about 66 percent of American adults now use the Internet.
David Pulliam, a 17-year-old high school senior from Indianapolis, is a typical example of a wired teen.
He first got Internet access when he was 13, as did most of those surveyed. He has a blog and loves to use instant messaging to stay in touch with friends that he has met at camps and sporting events. He also gets his news online, as do about three-quarters of teen Internet users who were surveyed. That’s an increase of about 38 percent, compared with 2000 results.
The survey, completed in late 2004, included responses from 1,100 young people who were contacted randomly by phone. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. It also found:
About half the young people who have online access say they log on to the Internet every day, up from 42 percent in 2000.
Three-quarters of wired teens use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of online adults. Teens most often reserve instant messaging for friends and e-mail for adults, including parents and teachers.
About half of families with teens who have an Internet connection have speedier broadband access, while the other half still use phone lines to connect.
Nearly a third of teens who use instant messaging have used it to send a music or video file.
While 45 percent of those surveyed have cellphones, those phones aren’t necessarily the preferred mode of communication.
Given a choice, about half of online teens still use land lines to call friends, while about a quarter prefer instant messaging and 12 percent say they’d rather call a friend on a cellphone.
Teenage girls between ages 15 and 17 who were surveyed were among the most intense users of the Internet and cellphones, including text messaging.
“It debunks the myth of the tech-savvy boy,” said Amanda Lenhart, a Pew researcher. As young people get Internet access at younger ages, that trend may only continue.
Susannah Stern, an assistant professor of communications studies at the University of San Diego, said that as wired as many young people are, the fact that about 3 million remain without Internet access is cause for concern. Many of them are low-income and a disproportionate number are black, the survey found.
“When so many teenagers have such access, the few that don’t are at a significant disadvantage,” Stern says.
