Teenagers, in many cases, go online and do not leave the Internet at all while they are awake. The observation is based on a new study from The Pew Research Center. Teens are not just distracted while driving; they are distracted in general.

Pew’s experts wrote:

Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily — including 24% who say they go online “almost constantly,” according to a new study from Pew Research Center. More than half (56%) of teens — defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 — go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Just 6% of teens report going online weekly, and 2% go online less often.

Additionally, use of the Internet skews heavily toward social networks, which is bad news for traditional media, particularly as the nation’s youth move online without taking old-world media and entertainment with them:

Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17 with 71% of all teens using the site, even as half of teens use Instagram and four-in-ten use Snapchat.

While this is good news for Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) in light of worry about the lack of growth in its user count and stagnating time of use by members, it is particularly bad news for Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), which has struggled to market itself as a real social network and not just a toy for sending brief messages.

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When not using social networks, teens glue themselves to the Internet via smartphones for other reasons:

As American teens adopt smartphones, they have a variety of methods for communication and sharing at their disposal. Texting is an especially important mode of communication for many teens. Some 88% of teens have or have access to cell phones or smartphones and 90% of those teens with phones exchange texts. A typical teen sends and receives 30 texts per day.

Accounting for normal sleep patterns, that is about two texts an hour.

No wonder so few students are ready for college.

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