There was an interesting article from the AP in The Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday regarding instant messaging (“IMs Help Teens Avoid Embarrassment“) .

The article suggests that teens use instant messenger services (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, etc.) to say things they might not say in person. Now, I left my awkward teenage glory days two years ago, but I think we can safely extend that age range into the early twenties, given my experience.

The entire “advantage” of not being near peers when you break into uncomfortable conversation is unusually attractive, omitted facial expressions and voice intonations notwithstanding. Actually, I think we compensate unusually well for the missing elements of communication, a credit to our online forebearers.

I have mixed feelings about the entire article, though. Most of it is more wrapped up in various facets of instant messaging, leaving only a paragraph or two to address the social avoidance syndrome described in the headline.

Sometimes, Fram and Tompson (Authors) were a bit unfair to the Generation X and the Baby-Boomers, asserting that teens employed “enough frenzied multitasking to fry the typical adult brain” when engaging in instant messaging.

I’d contend that my younger peers have no more mental power than your average Baby-Boomer or X’er, minus the Starship fans. I’m open to being wrong when I write this, but I also believe that anyone can be conditioned, and it is a conditioning, to multitask online like “one of us.” It’s more a question of practicality: It’s not healthy, so why start smoking?

There were some interesting gender divides:

Among teenagers, about half of girls and more than a third of boys said they have used instant messages for things they wouldn’t say in person.

Now, I don’t know if this means girls have more honest/potentially awkward conversations than boys, or if boys are just more courageous when it comes to the “in-person” department.

Given my gender’s anti-literacy stereotypes, I could also believe that girls are more likely to use instant messaging at all than boys, which would decrease the percentage of potentially embarrassing conversations entertained by males online, versus those held in person. A quick glance at my AIM buddy list finds 24 males and 64 females, but that’s probably just because I’m a pimp.

From my perspective, I’ll say that I’ve met a lot from both genders who won’t have serious conversations in person, but the most surprising have been female friends, who not only have outright refused to endure an awkward conversation with another individual, but go great (Often socially inept) lengths to avoid such personal confrontation.

My favorite part of the article, however, was this gem:

Adults outdo teens in only one activity while instant messaging — online shopping.

Well, friends, that sounds like a challenge, does it not? I think that’s probably because teens have few ways to pull off an online transaction. MasterCard has this thing against giving vast amounts of credit to jobless youngins whose income stream flows out of Daddy’s wallet. That is, unless you’re in college.

The particularly ironic part of this article was that the study was done online:

The online survey of 410 teens and 836 adults was conducted from Oct. 25-Nov. 5 by Knowledge Networks.

I’m curious to know how many teens paid it their full attention.