Communicating young Canadians

Now there's a twist: Canada's youth are "less active online than adults," ClickZ Network reports. Canadians 12-17 spend almost a third (27.8%) less time online than adults (13 hours/week vs. 18 hours/wk, on average), with their Internet behavior largely confined to social activities, according to a survey by market researchers Ipsos-Reid. The latter half of that sentence is less a surprise. Seventy-three percent of teens use email, 70% do instant-messaging, 49% use the Web for school research, and then the figures plummet to only 29% downloading music and go down from there. "Only 17% of teenagers reported having ever purchased something online, versus 50% of the adult online population." Parents, note the numbers that spark online-safety concerns related to all that online communication: "About 14% of teens reported that they had been asked at least once to meet in person with someone they originally met online. That number increases to 20% among respondents between ages 15 and 17, according to the survey."