Well, this 14-year-old girl named Tina knows it. She knows it well. And she’s so much better at guitar than you are. How does that make you feel, guy-playing-Wonderwall-at-the-party? Huh?

Best YouTube comment: Typical 14 year old girl. Doing something awesome, looks bored while doing it.

See how they compare below. I think she does more than admirably.

Justin Applewhite, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Scandale Fritz, 16, are named in the attack. According to prosecutors, Fritz lured a 12-year-old girl to his home, took her into the basement, and sexually assaulted her. Reports indicate that he then took Brown and Applewhite to the basement, where they all forced the girl to engage in sex acts.

According to the Sun-Times, the girl refused for a while, but eventually gave in because she knew the three teens were gang members and feared for her life if she continued to refuse.

The video allegedly shows the rape, complete with the waving of guns and the flashing of gang signs. One of the assaulters, Fritz, apparently turned the camera around on his own face, giving police a nice big image of who was perpetrating the crime.

The video eventually wound up on all of the attackers’ Facebook pages.

All three teens are being held on charges of aggravated criminal assault, and will return to court on June 6th. Sometimes, you just have to sit back and ask “wtf are people thinking?” Sadly, this is not the only serious crime that teens have committed and then posted to Facebook in recent memory. Last year, three teens were charged with first-degree murder after reportedly beating a disabled man to death and then uploading the video to Facebook. Earlier this year, two girls (14, 15) landed in hot water after they posted a video involving their attack on a 13-year-old girl to Facebook.

First, a study just published in the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes that “nearly half of US high school students aged ≥16 years report TWD during the past 30 days, and these students are more likely to engage in additional risky MV behaviors.”

What risky behaviors, you ask? Well, the study, based on data from the CDC, found that these teens who texted while driving were more likely to not wear their seatbelts and were also more likely to drink and drive (or at least ride in the car with someone who has been drinking).

The CDC study asked a sample of around 8.500 high school students whether they had texted while driving in the past month. Just shy of 45% copped to it. Those teens were then found to participate in other high-risk driving activities at a higher rate.

“Multitasking is fine if you’re sitting in your dorm room or at home in your bedroom, but multitasking in the car is a terrible idea,” said CDC director Tom Frieden. “It’s amazing how quickly things can go wrong in the car.”

Here’s another alarming find for you parents out there: according to another study, texting while driving is now killing more teens that drunk driving.

The study comes from the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York. They say that over 3,000 teens now die every year as the result of texting while driving. That number just beats the number killed in drunk driving accidents – 2,700.

Of course, texting is a more common practice than drinking while driving. But still, it’s a shocking figure.

“The reality is kids aren’t drinking seven days per week – they are carrying their phones and texting seven days per week, so you intuitively know this a more common occurrence,” said Dr. Andrew Adesman, Chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center.

Although these studies focused on teens, it’s not just the younger crowd who is guilty of texting while driving. A recent AT&T study found that 49% of adults admitted to the practice, compared to just 43% of teens. And it’s not for lack of knowledge. 98% admitted that they knew it was wrong, but did it anyway. 39 states currently ban texting while driving and another 6 ban it for novice drivers.

The data comes from Piper Jaffray’s 25th bi-annual “Taking Stock with Teens” survey that looks at everything from online shopping and fashion, to tech, social, and gaming.

The survey looked at which social networks are the “most important” for teens. It found that Facebook still holds the top spot – but barely. And it’s been declining over the past year.

Facebook is the most important social network for 33% of the teens surveyed, which is down 9% from 42% back in the Fall of 2012 (the last time this survey was published).

Twitter, on the other hand, saw an increase from 27% to 30% in teens claiming it as the most important social site in their lives. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook but has stayed independent, grew in popularity from 12% to 17%.

Watch out Facebook, Twitter is nearly as important to teens as you.

The only other significant change in social media loyalty among teens in the past few months is in the “other” category. Piper Jaffray notes that the top 5 “write-in” picks for most important social media service were Wanelo, Snapchat, 4chan, Kik, and Twitter’s just-launched six-second video app Vine.

Another interesting find from Piper Jaffray’s survey: Teens still love their iPhones. Nearly half (48%) of those surveyed said that they already own an iPhone (up from 40% in the Fall) and 62% said that they plan on buying the iPhone as their next device. Compare that with Android, which had 23% of teens expressing future desire.

[Image via toodlepip, Flickr]

Piper Jaffray’s 25th bi-annual teens and devices survey just came out. And in continuing what has been a trend over the last few surveys, Apple comes out on top. Although Android OS smartphones made some (very) small gains, the iPhone is far and away the most desired smartphone on the market among our nation’s bright future.

According to the survey, 48% of teens already own an iPhone. That’s up from 40% in October (the last time this survey was published), which is in turn up from 34% in the spring of 2012. So, in a year, we’re looking at a 14% increase in the iPhone’s market share among teens.

And 62% of teens said that their next device purchase will be an iPhone.

On the Android side, 23% expressed future plans to buy a smartphone, which is up 1% from last October.

Overall preference for the OS – 59% of teens say they’re likely to buy an iOS device (unchanged) compared to 21% likely to buy an Android OS device (up 1%).

Proclamations of the iPhone’s decline in popularity among today’s youth have been coming for a couple of years now. Upon the launch of the iPhone 4S, you may remember HTC President Martin Fitcher said that the iPhone is a dad phone, and that kids don’t find them cool anymore. Then, a couple of months later, a Nokia product manager called iPhone’s “black mono boxes” and said that the youth are fed up with the ubiquitous Apple product.

More recently, you may have read one of the many articles discussing the iPhone’s loss of cool with teens. “Teens are telling us Apple is done,” said one youth marketing director.

Sure, the U.S. smartphone market still has room to grow. And that means that all types of devices have room to grow. And with the gains we’ve seen recently from manufacturers like Samsung, it’s possible that Apple loses some of its dominance over the next few survey periods. But for now, it’s clear that teens love their iPhones.

[Image via heyheygig, Flickr]

The Pew Research Center released a new study today that found smartphone use increased among teenagers aged 12-17 by over 10 percent last year. One in four teens are also abandoning traditional Web browsing on computers in favor of browsing the Internet via their smartphone.

“The nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically — from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” said Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and co-author of the report. “In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.”

To get a full sense of how connected teenagers are today, take a look at the numbers:

No wonder teens are using smartphones as their primary Internet access device. Sharing a computer with the rest of the family is a sure fire way to get caught browsing questionable Web sites.

Check out the rest of the study here.

The Miami Herald is quoting the Miami police as stating the curfew enforcement is not a response to recent shootings. A string of shootings last weekend left two 16-year-olds dead and some communities are becoming restless for police action.

Instead, a Miami police spokesperson told the Miami newspaper that the curfew is related to the upcoming spring break, when school kids will be out of school.

This is not the first time that Miami police have instituted a curfew for teens. Enforcement of the law is normally stepped up during the summer months, when teens are out of school. The Juvenile Curfew Ordinance has been on the books in Miami for nearly two decades, but it is only in recent years that the Miami police have been using the curfew as a tool to curb violence involving teens.

Y Combinator partner and Posterous co-founder Garry Tan, with the help of Survata, looked at the social networking habits of teenagers and young adults. What he found was that Facebook is not the most popular of the bunch.

That honor belongs to Tumblr. The survey broke respondents up into two groups – those aged 13 to 18 and those aged 19-25. Both groups reported higher use on Tumblr than on Facebook. Combined, 54% of the 1,038 respondents said they used Facebook regularly. The survey defined regularly as “several hours a week or more.” But edging Facebook out by a small margin was Tumblr, which registered 59% use with those aged 13 to 25.

Twitter came in third of the social networks studied, with 20% use across the entire sample. Instagram logged 16% use and newcomer Snapchat saw 9%.

They also found something interesting – the younger the respondent, the more social network-happy they were in general

“Survata cofounder Aaron Wenger noted: ‘Usage levels were higher among 13-18yr olds than 19-25yr olds for every social network. The biggest differences were for Snapchat (13% for 13-18yr olds vs 4% for 19-25yr olds) and Instagram (21% vs 11%).’”

Still, Facebook is still incredibly popular among this age group, but it’s interesting to see that the younger crowd is not completely loyal to big blue.

[Garry Tan via Business Insider]

While 40% is an impressive figure, considering that iPhones only make up a few entries in an ecosystem full of smartphones – it becomes even more impressive when you look at that figure as a comparison to the last year. Back in the Spring of 2011, 17% of teens reported owning an iPhone (in the same survey). And the last time this survey was taken, in the Spring of 2012, 34% of teens owned an iPhone.

That’s a market growth of 135% in just a year and a half.

The Piper Jaffray survey (which included over 7,700 teens) also found that 62% of all respondents said they plan on purchasing an iPhone in the next six months. Only 22% said they plan on buying an Android phone.

One common marketing strategy used by Apple competitors is to paint the iPhone as unhip, uncool, and the phones of teens’ parents. Look no further than an ad from Samsung that’s still running in a national market. You know the one, right? People are standing in line for the new iPhone 5 and someone is playing with a Galaxy S3.

“Welcome back,” says another guy in line. “Guess that Galaxy S3 didn’t work out.”

“No, I love the GS3,” he replies. “It’s extremely awesome. I’m just saving a spot in line for someone.”

And bam – his parents show up. And that’s a common theme – that young people should not think iPhones are cool anymore. This has been a trend for over a year now. Take for instance last year, right before the launch of the iPhone 4S, HTC President Martin Fitcher dropped this gem:

“I brought my daughter back to college — she’s down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacture’s devices. If you look at a college campus, Mac Book Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.”

And a couple of months later, a Nokia product manager said that “youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone.” He also referred to iPhone as “black mono boxes” in a “sea of sameness.”

If that were the case, we’d expect to see iPhone adoption among teens drop or at least flatline – not grow 135% in 18 months. And this survey doesn’t even take into account the iPhone 5, as it has been on the shelves for less than a month.

“We are reaffirmed in our belief that Apple remains the pre-eminent technology brand for teens,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

The survey also looked at tablet adoption. 44% of teens surveys owned a tablet, and out of those 72% owned an iPad. Not only that, but 74% said they plan on buying an iPad in the next six months and 43% said they would buy a “smaller iPad” if the price point was to be below $300. Hello, iPad Mini.

[Image courtesy Photo Giddy, Flickr]

The fake Facebook profile was actually a creation of a mother and her daughter’s friend. After learning that her 17-year-old daughter was dating a convicted sex offender, 19-year-old William Elms, Julie Myrfors enlisted a teenage family friend to help her set up the fake account to trap him. The two created an account for a girl named “Ashley,” who they listed as 15 years old.

Once they tricked Elms into friend requesting Ashley through the staging of a fake squabble on the network, “Ashley” stuck up a dialogue with Elms. Soon, Elms was sending pictures of his genitalia to an email account set up for “Ashley.” According to the Skagit Valley Herald (Sedro-Wooley, Washington), Elms attempted to get “Ashley” to go camping with him and spend time discussing lewd sexual acts. “He also told her that if anyone asks, she should say she is 16 years old,” they report.

Although Myrfors orchestrated this Facebook sting without the help of local police, law enforcement stepped in when they were notified of the chats and pics. Elms is currently on probation stemming from a conviction for third-degree child molestation, which is defined by the Washington State criminal code as “sexual contact with another who is at least fourteen years old but less than sixteen years old” when the perpetrator is at least 4 years older than the victim.

According to NBC News, the Myrfors showed the evidence to their daughter, who even watched some of the lewd conversations with “Ashley” live, as they occurred.

“My daughter didn’t know we had done this. I invited her on to begin watching live. She started watching conversations on our fake little person,” said Mrs. Myrfor. “The hardest part as a parent was watching her heart break.”

Facebook has a strict policy against convicted sex offenders maintaining accounts, and even monitors chats for illegal communications. In this situation, the parents could have notified Facebook and probably had Elms’ account revoked, but I guess they wanted to do a little more than that.