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Studies show that many teenagers, 83 percent according to Pew Internet and American Life Project, serf the web regularly. Teenagers use the web for various tasks such as; school assignments, hobbies, entertainment, health, news, and e-commerce. Teenagers are very different from adults as well as from children, they are a category of their own. Web designers should take advantage of the number of teenagers that use the internet, to do this they need to separate the needs of the different age groups on their pages.
To target teenagers, designers need to understand how they think. Many people are quick to judge all teenagers by the few that they know, and it is usually the smarter ones that tend to stick out in your mind. For this reason it is common to place the stereotype of techno wizard, or something similar, on teenagers. The fact is that the top 5-10 percent of teenagers are very intelligent when it comes to internet and computers. However the other 80 percent, assuming that there is a small percentage that do not use the internet, are in reality the mainstream audience. Designers need to have the mainstream audience in mind and design a page according to how they think, not how the top computer wiz thinks. In usability tests have shown only a 55 % success rate among teenagers. This does not mean that 65% of teenagers are stupid, but that pages need to be designed for this mainstream audience.
Teenagers don't like boring sites. If they come to a site with too much to read or that is too hard to understand, they will move on. They like sites that are more interactive, that keep their mind moving. Some features that help attract teenagers include, online quizzes, online voting, games, forms for questions or feedback, message boards, and other interactive content that will help keep their attention.