The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project offers a variety of reports and data sets that examine teens’ use of technology. These studies are a bit different from our other work with adults. Our studies of youth typically survey both a teen (defined as a person age 12 to 17) and a parent or guardian. The language used in the questions aimed at teens is often tailored to the age group, and because of the additional complexity in surveying minors, the surveys have been fielded less frequently.
For quick and easy reference, the following details some key new data resources on teens as well as highlights some resources we offer that you may not have seen:
- Teens trend data (NEW) : Here you can explore basic internet user demographics, gadget ownership, online activities, internet access type, and technology usage over time from 2000 through 2009. Each trend set comes with visual charts or Excel files for download along with the pertinent links that enables researchers to drill-back to the original questionnaire and topline report. This also includes a teens counterpart to our “Usage Over Time” spreadsheet, a brand-new resource which contains nearly every question we have asked of teens on multiple surveys, available to download in Excel format.
- The teens topic page is the main landing page for all of our teens-related materials. Here you can browse all the teens-related Pew Internet Project reports, commentaries, presentations, infographics, data sets, and media mentions since 2000. You can also filter the results by date or type of material (such as showing only reports)
- Finally, all of our teen data sets are available for download are presented in a choice of different formats for researchers and interested parties including SPSS and CSV formats. More information about the types of data available and how to use it are available here. Questions about the use of Pew Internet Project datasets may be directed to data@pewresearch.org/internet.
Note: The most recent teens data currently on our website is from our September 2009 survey . Stay tuned for new data this fall.