A similar study conducted five years ago found that an estimated 17 million youth surf the web, whereas Pew's recent findings claim that number is now around 21 million, which averages out to approximately 11 million teens going online everyday, Pew says, compared to only 7 million in 2000.
Pew's statistics state that among teenagers living in the United States, 87 percent of those aged 12-17 are confirmed Internet users. Additionally, Pew says, teens are now using the web with greater frequency and in a broader variety of ways than before, including laptops, cellphones, smartphones and personal digital assistants. Only 16 percent of teens polled said they did not own alternate devices for accessing the Internet.
Pew tapped teenage girls as being the most Internet savvy, using the web with more frequency than their male counterparts to communicate with friends, shop and surf.
While the Pew study did not include access to adult entertainment or sexually explicit websites, the study said 81 percent of teen surfers use the web to play games, marking a 52 percent leap from five years ago.
Also sharply contrasting activity from 2000, 76 percent of teens get their news online, and 43 percent are active online shoppers, signifying a whopping 71 percent increase from 2000. Following at a distant 31 percent are teens who get health information online.
Pew also claims that more than half of the parents of those teen respondents use some type of filtering or monitoring software.
Trumping email as a favored communication tool, teenagers now say that texting and instant messaging are their primary forms of online communication. An estimated 33 percent of teens have used a cellphone to send a text message, and one in four respondents have used their cellphones to access the web.
"To them, email is increasingly seen as a tool for communicating with 'adults' such as teachers, institutions and as a way to convey lengthy and detailed information to large groups," Pew said. "Meanwhile, IM is used for everyday conversations with multiple friends that range from casual to more serious and private exchanges."