New Research from Tween Online Life

The latest findings from Tween Online Life were released last week. The new research explores behaviors and usage for a variety of digital and online sites including online video, e-commerce, gaming, communications and entertainment destinations.

YouTube, ESPN, Google and AddictingGames remain the most visited sites for tween boys. Tween girls favor YouTube, Disney, Yahoo and Facebook.

Where the tweens are
Well, over 60 percent of tweens said they viewed at least one video on YouTube during the past month. Hulu is also catching on too… about one in six tweens said they watched a TV show or movie on Hulu. Over the past two years, tweens have become the heaviest consumers of movies and TV shows online

Game on
For tweens gaming is increasingly popular in social media. Nearly nine out of ten tweens participate in regular (monthly) online gaming for either casual online play, multi-player games or console-based games. Today online gaming is fairly gender neutral. Things don’t start to be male-oriented until the early teen years.

Born to shop
E-commerce is also gaining as Tweens have become loyal online shoppers, with more than a third shopping (and buying) online at least once during the past month, as compared to only 25 percent just a year ago.

We all know that kids need to be at least 13 years old to register for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Tweens who really want in just need to fudge their birth date to register. And the research confirms that the “fudging” becomes all the more common as kids approach their thirteenth birthday.

Digital Playtime

Do play and learning go together?

According to the Pew Study on Teen Gaming and Civic Engagement, teens spend about half of their screen time playing games. Some of the most popular games have to do with racing, puzzles, sports, action, adventure and learning.

The new wave of gaming is highly social. Teens (and tweens) are becoming hooked on games that are a working model for online collaboration and problem solving. Some games even incorporate aspects of civic and political life.

My favorite interns from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society created a video on this topic that covers this topic very well.

I have seen some of this social gaming first hand since my son participates in Future Cities competitions through his middle school. The participants start out by creating cities using Sim City software. The students work in groups to develop the infrastructure of their future city. Sometimes they go online to consult with teams in other parts of the country. Eventually each team builds a model of the city and develops working prototypes of their infrastructure projects. My son’s team went to a regional competition where they won an award for their transportation system.

What is interesting about the future cities program is that the kids learn how to build models to represent their virtual cities. They learn how to adapt their designs to real-world conditions, much like an architect or engineer must do. Then they meet with other kids and the engineers that judge each entry at the Future Cities competition.