|
  A
new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project on Internet
use by teenagers includes data from focus groups at Elon University.
The Elon work was coordinated by School of Communications faculty
members Kelli Burns and Janna Quitney Anderson.
Amanda Lenhart,
one of the three authors of the Pew study, came to Elon in summer
2004 to conduct two focus groups that helped establish the issues
the survey addressed. Among
the teens participating were the children of several faculty members.
School of Communications faculty member Burns and student Lindsay
Porter '05 assisted with the focus-group work at Elon.
Participants
were audio or video taped, and a short online survey was administered
to each student prior to session. Additional focus groups were conducted
at other locations in the United States. Ages ranged from 11 to
17; 66 percent of the participants were boys and 34 percent were
girls.
 This
research piece continues Elon's partnership with the Pew Internet
& American Life Project. A major study about the future of the Internet
conducted by the School of Communications and Pew can be found at:
http://www.elon.edu/predictions.
Click on the
link below to download a copy of the Pew study related to use of
the Internet by teenagers:
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Tech_July2005web.pdf
And here's
an excerpt from a wire report on the teen study:
Teens
Using Internet in Record Numbers
By
Martha Irvine, AP National Writer
A new survey
says 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 through 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 access to the Internet when
he was 13, as did most of those who were surveyed. He has a blog
and loves to use instant messaging to stay in touch with friends
he's 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.
"It's hard
to imagine my life without it," Pulliam says of the Net. "In some
ways, life would become a little easier because it would slow down.
But it would become a lot more boring and hard because you would
always be waiting for letters and responses." At the same time,
he says he and his friends also have honed their Internet use -
seeing it more as a tool for communication or research than "a novelty."
Amanda Lenhart,
a Pew researcher, says that rings true with the findings of the
survey. "Teens are very selective - they're smart about their technology
use," she says. "They use it for the kinds of things they need to
do."
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
four percentage points. Its findings included the following:
- Of
those surveyed, 87 percent said they use the Internet. About half
of the young people who have online access say they go on the Internet
every day, up from 42 percent in 2000.
- Three-quarters
of wired teens use instant message, compared with 42 percent of
online adults who do so. Teens most often reserve IMing 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 IM have used it to send a music or video
file.
- While
45 percent of those surveyed have cell phones, 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 IMing and 12 percent say they'd rather
call a friend on a cell phone.
-
Older teen girls who were surveyed, ages 15 to 17, are among the
most intense users of the Internet and cell phones, including text
messaging.
"It debunks
the myth of the tech-savvy boy," Lenhart says. As young people get
Internet access at younger ages, that trend may only continue.
|
