Group items tagged

As any parent knows, tweens are crazy about cellphones. Those hoping to delay such a purchase--despite cries of "But everyone else has one!"--take note: 46% of U.S. tweens (ages 8 to 12) use cellphones, but only 26% own them, according to data released Wednesday by Nielsen Mobile. These "mobile borrowers" use their parents' phones when they go out with friends or on short trips, says Sally DePiro, a Nielsen product manager who worked on the report. The borrowing is more than an occasional habit: About 50% take their parents' phones more than three times a week. The key age for these early adopters is 10. While kids start using borrowed cellphones, on average, at around age eight-and-a-half, American tweens generally acquire their own phones between the ages of 10 and 11, reports Nielsen.

Twitter, the microblogging service has been the tech darling of late - racking up new users at a dizzying pace. But there simply aren't enough new users to make up for defecting ones claims one blogger. FaceBook and MySpace, the two social networking giants had double the retention rates Twitter has now. And, as fans are quick to point out in fields of comments around the Web, Facebook offers so many more ways to interact than Twitter.

In the recent report, How Teens Use Media, Nielsen debunks many of the myths around teen media consumption. Download the full report.

When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today's cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand-and limit-how children use new media

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company - almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The explosion in social networking may be even greater than imagined. The time that people in the U.S. spend on social network sites is up 83 percent from a year ago, according to a report from market researcher Nielsen Online.

When it comes to texting while driving, teens are a particular risk group considering that, according to Nielsen (PDF), "The average U.S. mobile teen now sends or receives an average of 2,899 text-messages per month" and apparently some of those texts are being sent and read from behind the wheel.

Over the last few months everyone has weighed in on the question of "Why Don't Teens Tweet" - except, it would appear, teens. We recently ran a survey of 10,000+ US teens aged 13 - 17 to see if we could add anything new to the question.