• by Shankar Gupta , July 28, 2005

Teenagers in the United States have embraced the Internet more completely than adults, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Among teens ages 12-17, almost nine in 10 teens--87 percent--use the Internet, compared to 66 percent of adults, according to the report, "Teens and Technology." For the study, Pew researchers surveyed 1,100 pairs of teens and one of their guardians at the end of last year.

About three in four--76 percent--of surveyed teens report getting news online; an even higher proportion--81 percent--play online games. Both of those proportions increased by a large margin since 2000, when just 38 percent of teens consumed news online, and 52 percent were online gamers.

Teens also seem to be doing a lot of text messaging. Forty-five percent of teens say they own a cell phone, and one in three teens--33 percent--have sent a text message. Online teens also are heavy instant messagers, with 75 percent using IM every day, compared to 42 percent of online adults. Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of online teens say that IM programs are their primary method of communicating--second only to landline phones, which came in at 52 percent. Almost half--48 percent--of the teens who instant message do so every day, and 30 percent send off IMs several times a day.

Teens also tend to be far more likely than adults to employ the deeper features of the IM programs. Fifty-six percent of instant messaging teens have created an IM profile that can be viewed by anyone who has their screen name, and 86 percent of instant messaging teens post away messages (compared to only 45 percent of IM-using adults).