Connected Teens

Very little in this article from the LA Times will surprise those who follow communication trends, especially among young people. But it makes several key points quite nicely, including:

• Increasingly, teens are connected 24/7 to family and friends via Internet and cell phone. "Millennials" (those born after 1982) are using technology to reconnect smaller groups into larger ones in a way never before possible. Some have hundreds of people on their "buddy lists."
  


• Teens value instant communication, favoring IM and text messaging over e-mail.


• The average teen spends only 53 minutes on the Internet per day, but might spend much more time text messaging.


• Growing reliance on electronic communication may be priming teens to meet, interact with and express emotions to people in wholly different ways. How this will affect them as they grow up and move into the wider (non-electronic) world remains to be seen.


• One semiconductor manufacturer estimates that 15-year-old girls are now the top consumers of computer chips.


• Teens multitask at a rate that stuns their elders (despite recent research suggesting that multitasking impairs concentration and cognition).


• Although technology makes it possible to communicate with people from all over the world, teens are most likely to interact electronically with those relatively close by.

Source: Smart Mobs