I'm excited to announce that today we're kicking off a new occasional feature with the help of Pangea, an online advertising company that operates a network of quiz sites, including youth-oriented Quibblo.com. Starting this month we'll report back on periodic surveys developed by us and distributed to Pangea's extensive community of tweens and early teens (ages 8 to 15). We hope this will help Ypulse readers (not to mention us) get a glimpse into what real teens and tweens think about the topics we discuss here…And if your company/agency/research house has access to tweens, teens, early twentysomethings and you're interested in developing a research based feature on Ypulse, just email us.

For our first survey we dove into a subject we knew tweens were passionate about: TV. And right we were – we heard back from nearly 1,500 tweens and early teens (Pangea's audience skews younger and mostly female) in under two weeks, and received more than 200 comments! Here are some of the highlights…

Logging on vs. tuning in. Surprisingly, 64 percent claimed to usually watch TV on an actual television set when the show was scheduled (vs. DVR, which 25 percent claimed was their viewing method of choice). Only 10 percent claimed to usually watch on their computers. My guess is this percentage exponentially increases as teens get older and get their own computers.

YouTube rocks. When asked to check off which site they would watch TV shows on online, the majority of votes (733) went to "Other" and respondents reported in comments that YouTube was their preferred viewing choice. In second place (616) was the channel's branded site, with iTunes (314) and Hulu (309) trailing behind.

Do we have your full attention? Not surprisingly, 50 percent claimed to go online "every once in a while" at the same time as they were watching TV. However, interestingly 21 percent claimed to never go online while watching. Similarly 35 percent claimed to never text while watching TV, beating out the 29 percent who claimed to text and watch most of the time, and only narrowly coming in second to those that text "every once in a while."

Under the influence. An overwhelming 85 percent claimed to have never been to a forum to talk about a television show. And 70 percent said they had not bought clothing as a result of seeing it on screen. However, 66 percent said that they had downloaded music after hearing it on an episode of a show. Makes sense considering you know exactly where to go to find the music.. not so much with clothes.

Webisodes: not a lost cause 60 percent reported that they had watched webisodes or an original series online. Comments didn't mention which ones. Readers, any suggestions? "Rockville, CA"?

As seen on TV. 53 percent said they usually heard about new shows from ads on television. 37 percent reported that they got their TV suggestions from a friend.

What to watch, what to watch. 64 percent preferred scripted shows to reality television, and 77 percent preferred cable to network programming. (Flashback to Youth Advisory Board member Alyx's picks for Best and Worst TV moments in 2008)

If I had to sacrifice a screen… 77 percent of teens claimed they would rather give up television than the internet. In retrospect, we should have also included the choice of "phone." I'm guessing that would win out over them all as most essential.

For more coverage of the tween space, check out the Ypulse Tweens Channel, sponsored by the Tween Tribune.

Categorized under: TV, Tweens

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