Sorry, Facebook. Better luck next time, Twitter. The most popular online site among youth is the old standby YouTube. A whopping 93 percent of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 check the video-sharing site at least once a week—way ahead of the 65 percent who check Facebook weekly. Sites such as Twitter, Google+ and Instagram lagged far behind, according to the study by IPSOS MediaCT and Wikia—and researchers didn’t ask about some of the newer sites such as Snapchat. Researchers also found that teens will hop online no matter what they’re doing in the physical world. About 56 percent of them admitted to plugging into the Internet while doing homework or attending church, and 55 percent said they went online while participating in sports. About 25 percent said they visited their first online site within five minutes of waking up in the morning—and all 1,203 teens polled said they were on the Internet for more than an hour every single day. (BuzzFeed)
Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.