Over the past two years, a teen named Blake Ross helped create a user-friendly Web browser called Firefox. In only five months, the program gained 5 percent of the market share from Microsoft�s Internet Explorer, according to Websidestory, a San Diego-based research firm.

Last year, 17-year-old Mike Rowe faced litigation for operating an online forum called www.mikerowesoft.com. Microsoft said his site�s name amounted to copyright infringement; ultimately Rowe settled with the company in exchange for an X-Box and a deal where Microsoft now helps redirect traffic to his new site www.mikeroweforums.com.

Meanwhile, a group of teenagers who work at Plugged In Enterprises, a computer training and entrepreneurial development program in East Palo Alto, Calif., have created a number of Web designs for paying commercial clients, including Pacific Bell, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard.

Are Ross, Rowe and the Plugged In teenagers representative of their peers nationwide?

Not according to Hoa Loranger, a researcher with the Nielsen Norman Group, who co-authored a recent study on how successfully teens in certain areas � including disadvantaged urban communities, affluent suburbs, and a rural part of Colorado � use the Web.

"There are so many stereotypes out there about teenagers," she says, noting that approximately 83 percent of U.S. teenagers have access to the Internet. "We constantly hear a lot of stories on the news that kids and teens are very high-tech and that they can do so much on the Web."

Through a series of user tests on a group of thirty-eight teens � composed of roughly equal numbers of males and females between the ages of 13 and 17 � her group found that teenagers have many needs that aren�t being met on today�s Internet.

When asked to visit selected Web sites and perform given tasks, the researchers measured a success rate of 55 percent, which is much lower than the 66 percent success rate they found for adult users in similar recent test.

Loranger says it�s important for educators � as well as for people who design Web sites � to recognize some of the challenges that average teens face when conducting online research, and to build on the features that make them want to learn more.

Research & Reading

Two big reasons for the low success rates in the Nielsen study were a lack of developed research strategies and poor reading skills, says Loranger. Because teens have much less research experience than adults, she explains, they often have a harder time combing through and making sense of complex information.

In the study, teens were more successful with some sites than others. For example, the group found the Web site of the Alzheimer�s Association easy to use. "The content is written in a way that they understand�short sentences, smaller paragraphs, and it isn�t dense content," explains Loranger. "They can actually scan the page and glean the information quickly."

Loranger notes, too, that younger teens tend to have less experience with Web-related information and therefore rely heavily on adults and teachers to guide them to answers. Older teens, meanwhile, tend to be much better at performing online tasks, like researching reports, finding college information and exploring current events.

Aiding Comprehension

Victor Diaz, the teenage lead designer of the East Palo Alto 20th Anniversary Film Festival site, says that capturing teens� attention is crucial in helping them understand the information provided on a Web site. To create visual interest for viewers of that page, he created a main collage that highlights diverse members of the community as well as landmarks from East Palo Alto.

The Web usability study confirms Diaz� idea. For all teens, regardless of age, the researchers say that Web designers should incorporate meaningful illustrations that complement a site�s information. Teens in the study responded well to ChannelOne.com because they thought that photos on the site tied in well with featured news articles.

"Doing this makes your site look interesting, but, more importantly, it helps teens better understand the content," according to the report. "Time and again, we heard high school students say that they don�t like to read or that reading is difficult for them. Sites that are text-heavy are daunting to teens."

Diaz himself tries to design Web sites that target teens with several graphics and vivid colors. "When I make a site for teens, I make it interesting, but easy to navigate," he reports. "It is boring when all you see is a site with nothing but text."

Nielsen researchers say that one important way to improve navigation involves presenting the breadth of the Web site�s content on the homepage to give users a true impression of what the site offers. Teens in the study especially liked sites such as PayPal.com, which have consistent and predictable navigation schemes.

Evaluating Information

Loranger's research also indicates that when teens are given the choice between sites that have illustrations and those that don't, they tend to choose the illustrated ones—even when they contain information that is less appropriate for the task they were asked to complete.

That's in line with several recent studies finding that many high school and middle school students are not very good at discriminating between various types of Web information.

The problem is a growing source of frustration for some youth librarians.

"Librarians fight an often-losing battle trying to get kids to take the accuracy and reliability of sites seriously," says Walter Minkel, reflecting on the latter years of his 25-year career as a librarian. "[Teens] should be required to use a print book or a recognized online encyclopedia, for example, to back up the commercially-sponsored pages that typically make up the top ten hits in a Google list. Right now, most teachers aren't requiring this kind of backup."

To alleviate the problem, Minkel says he'd like to see more instruction for students on how to navigate and judge a Web site's accuracy before they are assigned to conduct research on the Internet for reports and other projects.

Access Issues

Another finding from the Nielsen study confirmed past research that indicates a digital divide for some groups in accessing the Internet.

"Teenagers in the inner city or lower income areas tended not to have as much access to the Web as teens from higher socioeconomic areas," says Loranger. "Also, reading skills were somewhat lower."

"As far as navigation behavior is concerned, we didn�t see a lot of differences," she continues. "But teens who had limited exposure to the Web had a lot more difficulty with some of the things that we take for granted."

For instance, some teens thought that the URL box in a Web browser was the appropriate place to enter search terms, noted Loranger.

Combating the "Kiss of Death"

Overall, teens in the study frequently complained about sites that they found to be boring. The report indicates that most teens are active clickers: If they can�t get what they need quickly, they�ll go somewhere else.

"Being boring is the kiss of death in terms of keeping teens on your site," according to the report.

In addition to relevant graphics that help explain content, Loranger says that interactive features are important in keeping teens interested. She suggests that features like online quizzes and voting, feedback forms, games and message boards help to engage a teen audience, since they give the user something to do other than read.

The researchers were surprised to find that teenagers don�t like small font sizes any more than many adults do. "We have always assumed that tiny text is predominant on the Web because most Web designers are young and still have perfect vision, so we didn�t expect to find issues with font sizes when testing even younger users," says the report. "However, small type often caused problems or provoked negative comments from the teen users in our study. Even though most teens are sufficiently sharp-eyed, they move too quickly and are too easily distracted to attend to small text."

Connect for Teens?

For teens, another "kiss of death" feature revolves around the word "kid," says Loranger, because they don�t feel like the content speaks to their interests.

One 14-year-old boy had these harsh comments for a site that used "Kid" in its title: "This doesn't appeal to teens. This appeals to kids. They put kids and teens together. Kids and teens have different likes and dislikes. They are totally different from each other. If the site tries to have both in one area, they're messing up big time�I don't know what they are talking about."

For general sites that want to provide teen-specific content areas, the researchers suggest labeling the section "teens" and providing a link to it on the homepage. Providing categories based on grade level or age can also be a good solution, according to Loranger.

For teen Web designer Victor Diaz getting down and dirty in the HTML coding and designing of various Web sites was the best way to ensure a positive end result for teens. Today, his Bay Area Rap site about music professionals from his area who have made it big gets lots of attention from teens.

"Many people have signed my guestbook and they really like the rap dictionary," says Diaz. "People have told me that they like the fact that the new releases are in the main page. This keeps people coming back in my opinion."

Still, even Diaz knows that there�s room for improvement: "I think that people don�t like the fact that the Web site isn�t finished. I still haven't updated the artists� pages."

Resources:

• Pew Internet & American Life Project: Teenage Life Online
• Jakob Nielsen: Usability of Websites for Teenagers

Rob Capriccioso is a staff writer for Connect for Kids.