Profiles of Internet Users by Age Group - Ages 15-17
Older teens use the Internet as an extension of their existing interests and as a connection to friends. The five Web sites most frequently mentioned by this age group in Young Canadians In A Wired World: The Students' View are:
Boys:
- hotmail.com
- napster.com
- yahoo.com
- google.com
- altavista.com
Girls:
- hotmail.com
- yahoo.com
- napster.com
- icq.com
- muchmusic.com
- Once again, hotmail.com, napster.com and yahoo.com remain the three most popular Web sites, making sending and receiving e-mail, downloading software, games or music, and using multi-purpose portals the top three online activities for both sexes in this group.
- While looking for sports information remains a top online activity for boys in this age group, their number one online activity is visiting Web sites to play games and look for cheat codes.
- Teens in this group see the Internet as an effective tool for finding information. Three out of the five top Web sites chosen by boys and three out of the top ten Web sites chosen by girls are search engines or Web sites that include search engines as part of their services.
- When it comes to downloading materials from the Internet, girls are primarily seeking music files using napster.com. Boys download from the Internet twice as often as girls and will visit Web sites for a wide variety of needs. Warez.com, which features pirated versions of popular games and software, is the third most popular download Web site mentioned by boys in this group
- Instant messaging and online chat remain popular activities for the girls, who are four times more likely to include chat rooms in their list of favourites.
- Girls in this age group are twice as likely as boys to visit Web sites that reflect other cultures.
- Explicit adult sites continue to attract boys at this age, who list adult Web sites sixteen times more often than girls.
