So what do Teens do?

In their recent report How Teens Use Media, Nielsen “debunks” the myths that teenagers are addicted to new media and unreachable by conventional means. In fact the report shows that on average teenagers behave in similar ways to their parents.

Their surveys show that while US teens watch less TV than the average (104:24 (hh:mm) against 153:27), it is still nearly 10x the amount of time spent on the internet (11:32). Twelve million US teens watched video online in May (2/3 of the internet population) and 18% watched video content on their mobiles.

Even more surprisingly while 90% of US teens have access to the internet at home and 73% at school (a surprising statistic in itself) they only spend an average of Eleven Hours, 32 minutes online, Way below the average 29 hours per month. Nearly half of US online teens visited social networking sites, and they are more likely to update their profiles than adults, but otherwise their internet use mirrors the general online population.

One myth Neilson confirms is the high use of mobile phones and texting.77% of US teens have a mobile and another 11% regularly borrow one. 83% of these use texting and 56% use MMS/picture messaging. On average US teens send or receive a staggering 2899 texts per month, an increase of 56% over the past 2 years.

However Neilson point out that the myth that teenagers ONLY text is also wrong – they are early adopters of all mobile technologies:

“More than one-third of teens download ringtones, instant message or use the mobile Web, while about one-quarter of U.S. teens download games and applications. To a lesser extent, teens are using video messaging (26%), watching mobile video (18%) and using location-based services on their phone (16%).”


Again the myth that teenagers are dominant in the gaming arena is debunked by figures that show they make up only 23% of the “console” audience and 10% of PC gaming minutes. Having said that 83% of US teens have at least one console in their rooms.

So in conclusion, teens are early adopters and use the whole range of mobile and internet tools, but TV still takes up more of their time that any other medium. So while we need to be speaking to them in “their space” they are still seeing, and presumably absorbing, they same messages as the wider population through the same mediums.