Teens not so Web-savvy: Study

Are we parents techno-peasants compared to our teenagers? A just-released study by market researchers Nielsen Norman Group found the answer to be yes and no. USATODAY and CNN handled the findings a little differently, but both said the findings challenge the widely held stereotype of the teen "technowizard." "The study [conducted in California, Colorado, and Australia] showed that teens quickly succumb to Internet ennui and, unlike their parents, give up quickly on sites that are difficult to navigate," according to CNN. But both CNN's headline and USATODAY's article says that means parents are more Web-savvy. It could also mean we're more patient and read instructions more - it just might be more about maturity. "The Nielsen study asked 38 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 to perform tasks on 23 specific Web sites. The study measured a success rate of 55% for teenage users" and 66% for adult users. "The success indicates a proportion of time the users were able to complete a task on a target site. Teens were found to have poor reading skills, unsophisticated research strategies and a 'dramatically' lower patience level," CNN reports.

This doesn't deter me from believing that teenagers as a whole are more tech- and Net-savvy than parents as a whole. But there's a distinction that these articles fail to make between "media literacy" and "Web literacy." I think adults are generally more media-literate, more critical about the media they consume, on and off the Web, and maturity is part of the reason. Youth, on the other hand, are much more fluent (and adventurous) with the technology itself - plenty critical about how easily they can move around in a Web site and not so much about its content. What do *you* think? Email me! Here's NNGroup's press release. For more on critical thinking online, see my 5/30/03 issue.