Teens and Technology - Pew Internet & American Life Project

Part 4. Communications Tools and Teens
In December 2000, 35% of teens were using IM daily and 47% reported weekly use of
the technology. Only 18% used it less often. In February 2004, 36% of adults who use
instant messaging reported using IM daily, and 27% reported using it weekly. Thirtyseven
percent said they used IM less often than weekly, with the largest chunk of those
users signing on less often than every few weeks.
Teens’ enthusiasm for IM leads them to select it more frequently than other methods of
written communication when talking with friends. When offered the choice among
instant messaging, email and text messaging, teens are significantly more likely to choose
instant messaging than email or text messaging. Fully 46% of teens said they choose
instant messaging most often when communicating by text with friends, compared with a
third (33%) who choose email and 15% who most often use text messaging.
IM is especially pervasive in the lives of daily internet users.
Instant messaging activity varies according to how frequently a teen goes online. Similar
to the findings with email, IM is a technology that uses “presence” or the ability to see
others who are online at the same time to talk. And for those with less reliable or less
frequent access or less time to talk, instant messaging may not be as useful a tool for
communication.
Teens who go online daily are more likely than teens who go online less frequently to
IM. Eighty-six percent of daily internet users use IM; 70% of teens who go online several
times a week use IM; and less than half (48%) of those who go online less frequently use
IM.
Teens are now clocking in longer hours on IM.
Teens are also using instant messaging for longer periods of time. 14 On a typical day, the
largest group of teens (37%) say they instant message for a half-hour to an hour. Onequarter
(27%) say they IM for less than a half-hour a day, and another quarter (24%) say
they IM for 1- 2 hours a day. A small but dedicated subgroup (11%), IM for more than
two hours on a typical day. Since 2000, there are more teens reporting lengthy average
use times. In the past, 21% reported using IM for more than an hour on a typical day,
compared to 35% of teens today. Not surprisingly, teens who use IM the most often also
report using it for the longest amounts of time.
The size of a teen’s buddy list varies with the intensity of IM use.
As mentioned above, one of the major features of instant messaging is something called
“presence” — that is, the ability for the user to know who else is available on the network
14 It is important to note here that it can be quite difficult to ascertain what is meant by “using IM.” For some
users it may mean simply being logged into the system, and for others it may mean active exchanges.
Teens and Technology - 17 - Pew Internet & American Life Project