Fast facts: Teens and and the internet/technology
As of July 2011:
- Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are online.
- 77% of teens have a cell phone.
- 23% of teens have a smartphone; 54% have a regular cell phone (or are not sure what kind of phone they have), and another 23% of teens do not have a cell phone at all.
- 74% own a desktop or laptop computer.
- Texting dominates teens’ general communication choices. Overall, 75% of all teens text, and 63% say that they use text to communicate with others every day.
- The volume of texting among teens has risen from a median 50 texts a day in 2009 to 60 texts for the typical teen text user.
- 80% of online teens use social network sites such as Facebook or MySpace, and 16% use Twitter.
- 69% of social media-using teens say their experience is that peers are mostly kind to each other in social network spaces. Another 20% say their peers are mostly unkind, while 11% volunteered that “it depends.”
- 8% of social media-using teens have witnessed other people be mean or cruel on social network sites.
- 44% of online teens admit to lying about their age at one time or another so they could access a website or sign up for an online account.
