eMarketer reports that email may not always be the best way to reach the tween and teen market.

Email may not be the preferred method of communication among tweens and teens, according to eMarketer

Email may be the most widely used internet application among adults, but it does not have nearly the ubiquity among tweens and young teens.

According to Simmons, 20 percent of tween online users and 50 percent of young teen online users said they used email in the last month. Similarly, data from Harris indicates that 40 percent of children ages 8 to 12 check email.

By comparison, 77 percent of adult internet users checked email on an average day in 2005, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Young people do not always have a positive attitude toward email-- and companies such as Viacom's Nickelodeon are recognizing that. "Think e-mail's too old school?" a banner ad for NickMail -- a hybrid of email, IM and animation -- blares on the Nickelodeon website.

Among teens ages 12 to 14 who were surveyed in 2005 by Teenage Research Unlimited on behalf of the Newspaper Association of America, one-third preferred instant messages and 15 percent preferred email as a way to communicate with friends. Among older teens, interest in email did not rise. Instead, their preference for instant messaging grew.

For tweens surveyed by Refinery for the KidzWorld website, email ranks as less favorable than games, IM and "fun" online activities such as reading about celebrities or movies. (The survey asked, "Do you like activity X?")

These attitudes are not limited to the tween/young teen demographic. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found in a 2004 survey that 46 percent of online teens ages 12 to 17 usually choose IM over email when they are communicating in writing with their friends.

And in informal research that eMarketer conducted on college campuses for a report on college students issued earlier this year, students expressed strong aversion to email, saying they used it when they had to, to communicate with adults or to send something "official."

All this is not to say tweens and young teens will not use email at all. As indicated in the Harris study above, 82 percent of online teens ages 13 to 15 and 93 percent of those 16 to 18 do check email. But more and more, email is not the first choice for communication.

Debra Aho Williamson is a senior analyst at eMarketer. This article was drawn from her report Tweens and Teens Online: From Mario to MySpace. Contact eMarketer directly.