Teens Live in the Real World Too

New research from OTX (n=750, US teens 13-17) has found that teens prefer the real world to online. The survey found that teens are spending an average of 11.5 hours per week online, with roughly 24% spending 15 hours per week online.

Here are the “top online activities” for teens according to the OTX findings:

1. Use Instant Messaging
2. Visit social networking sites
3. Send and receive email
4. Use a search engine
5. Visit virtual community sites

Yet the study also found that, contrary to popular perceptions, teens would rather live in the real world:

Would you rather

Have a lot of “real friends” 91%
Have a lot of “online friends” 9%

Date someone you know from school 87%
Date someone you meet on the Internet 13%

Shop in a store 82%
Shop online 18%

Watch a full length program on TV 81%
Watch a full length program online 19%

No television for a week 74%
No Internet for a week 26%

Get information from the Internet 71%
Get information from traditional media like TV, magazines, or newspapers 29%

Give up cell phone texting 71%
Give up Internet access 29%

Get your locker vandalized 63%
Get your personal homepage of profile vandalized 37%

Be limited to a TV antenna for watching TV 63%
Be limited to a dial up connection to access the Internet 37%

IM your friend 54%
Call your friend 46%

There are a few things to point out here:

• Teens would rather shop in a store (a social activity) than online (an isolated activity)
• They’d give up the Internet before text messaging
• They prefer the Internet to traditional media as an information source
• They’d rather IM than talk on the phone (as a group)
• They’d rather watch “full-length” video on TV than online

This is a single study but what emerges from these findings is that teens regard the Internet as a tool rather than a lifestyle as many have suggested. It also shows that most are grounded in the real world and have a reasonably healthy perspective on technology.

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Correction: as was pointed out to me, I read the data incorrectly. It appears that teens would rather give up text messaging before the Internet. This is somewhat contradicted by data from the Pew Internet Project showing cellphones would be the last item of technology people would give up (vs. TV, Internet). That was in my head as I wrote this.

I suspect the teens equated the Internet and IM and would prefer to give up SMS before IM. I’m somewhat skeptical of the result as presented and believe the wording of the question probably influenced the finding.

Multiplied Building Out Local Search Partners

Canada’s Multiplied Media continues to do deals with a range of content providers and publishers in local. Most recently the company added the ability to purchase movie tickets through its IM-based Poynt application. I spoke to CEO John Lowe the other day and he described a long list of deals in the US, Europe and Latin America in the pipeline.

Using Poynt takes a little getting used to but here are what some of the results look like:

The service will also be available in mobile at some point.

The idea is that IM is a medium that serves well over 300 million people on a global basis and that it is a neglected but potentially very effective entry or distribution point for local search content. The challenge will be to get people to add the service to their preferred IM client (as a contact) and then get them off their “search” habit.

Multiplied Media in Deal with T-Info

Multiplied Media has announced a deal with Deutsche Telekom (DeTeMedien) in Germany to distribute local search content there on its Poynt IM and mobile platform. This is the company’s first EU deal and similar to deals in the US (e.g., with Idearc/Superpages). It’s a new distribution channel (IM) for the content on T-Info’s local search site: Suchen.de.

I love the slogan: Die Lokale Suchmaschine fur Duestchland (the local search engine for Germany).

Multiplied Adds Movie Search

Canada’s Multiplied Media has added movie search to its IM-based local search application Poynt. The application is currently available on AIM and Microsoft Messenger. It attempts to reach the 70+ million users on the two IM systems. Superpages is the YP data provider, while other partners provide other types of content.

Beyond the fact of it being on an IM platform, one of the aspects of this application that makes it unique is the option to collaboratively conduct searches with others in real-time in the IM window. It’s also an application that complements IYP usage and may be able to reach some younger users that might not be inclined to use an IYP.

On the other side, there’s something of an awareness challenge in getting people to add Poynt to AIM or Messenger and start thinking about IM as a local search platform.