Teens prefer Net to TV

People 13 to 24 spend more time online than watching TV or talking on the phone, a new Yahoo-sponsored study, "Born to Be Wired," found. In its coverage, MSNBC reports that this age group spends "an average of 16.7 hours a week online" vs. 13.6 hours watching TV. Radio gets 12 hours, phone conversations 7.7, and books and magazines 6 (of course, a lot of that probably happens simultaneously!). Interesting: "Being in 'control' of how they surfed the Web and the ability to personalize their media content online is most appealing to them," but they "don't feel overwhelmed by the abundance of media choices available to them," MSNBC says. Meanwhile, now we find out – from a study at the University of Chicago - that TV doesn't rot kids' brains after all. The New York Times reports that the study tapped into "a trove of data from the 1960s to argue that when it comes to academic test scores, parents can let children watch TV without fear of future harm."