Survey reveals how
teens use the Internet
REDWOOD CITY, CA - (PRNewswire) - A survey of teens conducted on the internet shows that they are spending more time surfing the internet and playing games than doing their homework. Teens 13-17 who answered a survey posted on a World Wide Web page said they spend three times as much time surfing the entertainment sites as they do conducting research for schoolwork.
Teen Internet Survey Results
Q: How many hours do you...?
Mean Number of Hours
Reported Spent per Week
(Sample Size258)
| Surf the Web/checking out Web sites | 5.6 |
| Chat on-line | 4.9 |
| E-mail friends | 3.6 |
| Play games on the computer | 3.1 |
| Download/learn about new music | 2.2 |
| Download freeware/software | 1.9 |
| Do school work on the computer | 1.8 |
| Other | 1.5 |
| Draw/create things on the computer | 1.7 |
| Create/update my own website | 1.4 |
The survey, conducted by Cheskin+Masten/ImageNet, also asked teens to list the best and worst web sites they've visited.
| Best Sites | Worst Sites |
| 1. MTV.com | 1. Playboy.com |
| 2. Teens.com | 2. CocaCola.com |
| 3. ESPN Sportzone | 3. Sex.com |
| 4. cyberteens | 4. MTV.com |
| 5. chathouse | |
| 6. geocities.com | |
| 7. Nike.com | |
| 8. love.com | |
| 9. Playboy.com |
The Survey also indicates that:
.. Teens 13-15 spend about as much time on the computer playing games as do older teens aged 16-17 (3.2 hours to 2.8 hours per week respectively).
.. Older teens spend signiflcantly more time surfing the web than younger teens (6.8 hours per week reported by teens l6-17, compared to 5.3 hours per week reported by teens 13-15).
.. While males reported spending more time than females on the computer with the majority of these activities, males and females report spending about the same amount of time e-mailing.
Males on the Internet report spending more time on computer activities than do females:
.. Male teens from the study claim to spend 50 percent more time playing games on the computer during a week than females do (3.8 hours vs. 2.5 hours per week respectively).
.. Males spend more time surfing the web (an average of 7 hours for boys vs. 4.5 hours for girls).
.. Males also report spending more time doing school work (2.1 hours for teen boys, vs. 1.6 hours reported by teen girls).
.. Twice as many males (38%) as females (19%) report having created their own web page.