The latest wave of Tweens Online has just been released. Suffice to say, they're a pretty interesting bunch and apparently a bunch that would prefer not to be left out of the social media game. Rules are rules...right? It's no secret that users need to be at least 13 years of age to be able to register for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and others. And it certainly doesn't take an advanced tween to figure out all they need to do is fib their birth date by a year or two in order to successfully register. That said, according to the new wave of Tween Online Life, nearly one in four respondents (23% to be exact) said they had a profile page on Facebook, while about one in ten (9%) had a profile page on MySpace.
Beyond gaming the social media ecosystem, it's fair to say you can sum up the online habits of tweens in just one word. That one word is gaming. This is quite impressive - nearly nine in ten tweens regularly participate (once a month or more often) in some sort of online gaming whether it's casual online play, multi-player online play or console-based online play. This participation level is even more robust than tweens and blows away with what we see with the college segment. The reason is simple, gaming at its most basic level for tweens is almost gender neutral. The transition towards the male skew really doesn't begin until about age 13 or 14.
YouTube, ESPN, Google and AddictingGames are among the most popular and most visited sites among tween boys, while tween female favorites include YouTube, Disney, Yahoo and yes...Facebook. More than six in ten (62%) tweens said they streamed at least one video clip on YouTube during the past month while about one in six said they watched a TV show or movie for free on Hulu.
More highlights to follow shortly...
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