Teenagers and the Internet


December 15, 2001



BOB GARFIELD: If you've ever worried about how teens use the Internet, the countless time frittered away on instant messaging; all the lawless, lurid areas where they squander their allowances in exchange for the pleasures of cyber-flesh, you'll be interested in a study released this week. The Kaiser Foundation surveyed teens aged 15 to 24 and found that they rely on the Internet more than ever, and not just for the things you would expect. On the Media's Jad Abumrad reports.

JAD ABUMRAD: Between them teenagers Jamida [sp?] and Jackie [sp?] have over 200 people on their instant messenger buddy lists from friends at school to people in China.

WOMAN: ...other than information--

WOMAN: Oh about the chat room. The chat room, the chat room, the chat room. It's mad funny!

WOMAN: And instant messaging.

WOMAN: Yeah, that's hot. Yeah. Yeah.

JAD ABUMRAD: For them, the Internet is a supercharged telephone and it also seems to be a quick way to get homework done -- with a little help for their friends. [SEVERAL TEENS SPEAKING AT ONCE]

WOMAN: Somebody [...?...]-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

WOMAN: Copy and paste. [??] [LAUGHS] [LAUGHTER]

WOMAN: Click, click, click -- copy. Click, click, click - paste, you're done, man. You....

JAD ABUMRAD: I conducted a miniature version of a larger survey just released by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser grilled about 12 hundred young people between the ages of 15 and 24 about their Net habits. The first thing they found, perhaps most obvious, is that teens use it -- a lot.

WOMAN: 90 percent of all 15 to 24 year old have gone on line. If you look at the younger end of that, the 15 to 17 year olds, 95 percent of them have gone on line; so you can see how it's trending.

JAD ABUMRAD: To Vicky Rideout [sp?] of Kaiser, the vast numbers of teens on line isn't the surprising part. It's what they use it for. Behind communicating and getting news and information for school reports, the next biggest use was searching for health information, which even beat out downloading music. Rideout says that previous studies never showed this trend simply because they never asked the right questions.

VICKY RIDEOUT: Most of the studies that are done about young people and-- the Internet are done for commercial purposes -- they're done for marketing purposes - they're proprietary information. So they're more interested in are young people downloading music or are they using credit cards, are they willing to buy anything on line and so on.

JAD ABUMRAD: My informal focus group seemed to this. In the last few months, each had surfed for something health-related, from birth control to HIV to diabetes.

JAMIDA: When my father first got diabetes, I had to look on the Internet to see what it was and what symptoms were it and what can happen if he don't take his medicine cause he's very stubborn, and--

JAD ABUMRAD: The first place Jamida checked for info on whether her or her 9 siblings were also at risk for diabetes was Yahoo's Health Channel. She turns to the Internet, she says, because it's confidential.

JAMIDA: But let's say like you had a yeast infection, and you were a girl, right? And my doctor's a guy -- and I didn't want to ask him, so you could just look it up, find out the symptoms, see if you have it, and then go to your doctor and say I need this, that and the other.

JAD ABUMRAD: Particularly with teenage girls, the Internet seems to fill a void. That's according to Esther Drill [sp?], CEO of GURLE -- that's G U R L E -- dot com.

ESTHER DRILL: It's a weird time for teenage girls when it comes to doctors because you know you've had your pediatrician and you haven't necessarily gone to the gynecologist yet. A lot of girls put that off. So they're kind of in an in between time when it comes to, you know, their health care practitioner.

JAD ABUMRAD: The Kaiser's Study's 19 charts paint a nuanced picture of how teens use the Net. For instance, yes, young people are turning to cyberspace more and more for info about their health, but only 17 percent surveyed wholeheartedly trust the health information they find. 40 percent said they somewhat trust it. That skepticism seemed right in line with how Jackie felt. JACKIE: Yeah, because like you really -- you shouldn't take all that information just like a-- like treat yourself with it, cause you - like you really can't trust most of it.

JAD ABUMRAD: The study also seems to confirm the digital divide. When asked if they have Internet access at home, 80 percent of white families said they did compared to 68 percent of African-Americans and 55 percent of Hispanics. Computers in schools and libraries have lessened the gap, but they have also become the center of a legal dispute. Last year Congress passed the Children's On Line Protection Act which requires schools and libraries to filter out unsavory content. The ACLU and the American Library Association are challenging the Act before the Supreme Court. They think it violates free speech rights. On top of that, says Esther Drill, the filters often nab legitimate health-related sites like Gurle.com.

ESTHER DRILL: We've had reports about people being blocked from our site.

JAD ABUMRAD: Half the kids surveyed by Kaiser said that at one time or another they had been blocked from entering a site that wasn't pornographic. Nevertheless when asked if they support Internet filters, 60 percent said yes. The number went up to 70 percent when asked if they had ever accidentally stumbled onto a pornographic site. It's something that happens to Jonathan from my survey quite frequently.

JONATHAN: Cause sometimes like I'll be at a search engine and I'll by- accidentally click on something, and it'll send you to this bad site, [LAUGHTER] and then like you try to X out, and the other one pops up.

WOMAN: Oh, that's annoying.

JONATHAN: And your parent walks in and see-- oh, checks what you've been on and they yell at you.

WOMAN: This a little porno about college? [LAUGHTER]

JONATHAN: No! [LAUGHS]

WOMAN: Yes, you were--!!!

JONATHAN: No, [LAUGHS] I was not!

WOMAN: Yes, you were!!!

JAD ABUMRAD: The Kaiser Family Foundation Survey makes a few things clear. Teen life on the Internet is complicated, full of information -- not all of it accurate and strewn with naughty traps.

JONATHAN: I swear--

JAD ABUMRAD: And my informal survey--

JONATHAN: -- pinky-promise.

JAD ABUMRAD: --also suggests that there is no turning back. Teens 15 to 17 barely remember a time without the Internet. For On the Media this is Jad Abumrad. [IDYLLIC MUSIC]