Fast Facts: Teens and Tweens

** A recent Nielsen study of American teens reveals the dominant role media and media devices have in their lives. Teens today…

… watch more mobile video than other age groups. On average, mobile subscribers 12 to 17 years old watched 7 hours and 13 minutes of mobile video a month in the last quarter of 2010, compared to 4 hours and 20 minutes for the general population.

… send more text messages than all other age groups. In the first quarter of 2011, teens 13 to 17 years old sent an average of 3,364 mobile texts per month, more than double the number of messages sent by the next most active texting group, 18- to 24- year-olds (who sent 1,640 text messages per month).

… grew up in the age of social media, and it shows. While they make up just 7.4 percent of those using social networks, 79 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds visited social networks or blogs.

… watch less TV than the general population. The average American watched 34 hours and 39 minutes of TV per week in the last quarter of 2010, a year-over-year increase of two minutes. Teens 12 to 17 watched the least amount of TV on average: 23 hours and 41 minutes per week.

… spend less time on their computers. American 18-year-olds averaged 39 hours and 50 minutes online from their home computers, of which 5 hours and 26 minutes was spent streaming online video.

** Annual teen employment rates have dropped from nearly 46 percent in 2000 to less than 27 percent in 2010, according to a new report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. CLMS uses teen employment rates for January through April to project teen employment in the summer months, when teens are traditionally more likely to work. The summer 2011 teen employment rate is forecast for 27 percent. If this rate also falls 2 percentage points below projections, it would set a new record low, with only one in four teens working during the summer.

** Friends, the Internet and television are, in that order, the top three influencers on teens’ clothing and footwear purchases, according to Piper Jaffray Companies’ Spring 2011 “Taking Stock With Teens.” The annual survey examines approximately 4,500 high school students from households with an average annual income of $45,000. Respondents were asked to rank choices on a scale of 1 to 7; the results were:

1. Friends
2. Internet
3. Television
4. Magazines
5. Movies
6. Sports
7. Other

In the same survey, the students were asked their preferred shopping channels. Here’s how major shopping channels fared (figures have been rounded):

Specialty stores – 29 percent
Major chain stores – 17 percent
Discount stores – 17 percent
Department stores – 11 percent
Outlet stores – 11 percent
Internet – 11 percent
Mail order – 3 percent

** A 2011 report from Forrester Research shows that only 6 percent of consumers between the ages of 12 and 17 are interested in interacting with companies on Facebook, despite the fact that they represent the most active demographic among social network users. Almost 50 percent of young users said they could trust a company's website, while only 26 percent said the same thing about corporate Facebook pages.