p2pnet - rss feed: Canadian teens love email, IM
p2pnet.net News:- Instead of picking up the phone, Canadian teens now turn to the keyboard as their favourite communications device, says a new study.
But, there’s also a, “potentially alarming trend developing across the nation as 14% of teens have ever been asked to meet in person with someone they originally met online, a percentage that increases to 20% among those between 15 and 17 years of age,” says an Ipsos-Reid report.
“Much to the alarm of parents of teens, this does raise a potential red-flag,” says senior vp Steve Mossop. “However, I believe it’s the nature of random, extreme cases of meetings gone wrong that has parents concerned rather than in-person encounters being a widespread legitimate threat.”
A detailed look at the online activities of teens aged 12 to17, and how they’re using the Net, reveals it’s changing the social fabric of “interpersonal communication”.
Socializing now supersedes all other online activities by a wide margin and 73% of the teens send and receive email at least a few times per week, and 70% use instant messaging (70%), far exceeding other online “non-social” activities participated in by a significant margin, says the survey, going on:
“Furthermore, there are a host of other social activities such as playing online games against friends (28%) or strangers (23%), posting to online forums (11%) or visiting web logs or ‘blogs’ (10%), that a small, but dedicated group of online teens regularly participates in.”
Other non-social online activities such as doing research for school projects (45% do at least a few times per week), downloading music (29%), visiting news and information sites (23%), looking for movie reviews/show times (15%), uploading photos (15%), or listening to online radio (12%) are still popular, but far less common.
“On the other hand, other widely participated in adult online activities (by at least ½ of adults) don’t even register among teens, such as comparison-shopping (9%), clicking online advertising (6%), online banking (2%), and ecommerce (1%).”
In fact, so prevalent has email and instant messaging become, that it’s a daily activity among 57% of teens, and a weekly activity among nearly all teens (97%).
By comparison, only 50% of adults have even tried instant messaging, and daily usage of email is just 57%.
“Older teens are much more likely to use instant messaging and email than younger teens, as 59% of 15-17 year olds use email daily compared to ½ that number among 12-14 year olds (30%), and the same applies for instant messaging (60% daily vs 36% among younger teens),” says Ipsos-Reid.
“We’re really seeing a fundamental shift in communication behaviours amongst teens across the country” says Mossop, the company’s .
“The amount of time teens are spending online interacting with each other through chatting, gaming and posting to forums etc, has significantly changed the face of teen social interactions in just a decade.”
Although 88% of online teens said they still use the home phone to talk to their friends, it and instant messaging were virtually tied at 45% and 44% respectively.
“Email and cell phones are almost off the radar screen as the preferred method as only 6% of teens pick email as their favourite way to communicate with friends and only 4% pick their personal cell phone,” says the report.
But among teens 15 to 17, instant messaging takes the top spot in terms of preferences, with 50% picking it compared to 37% picking the home phone (53% of teens 12 to 14 pick the home phone compared to 41% who pick instant messaging).
