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Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz announced today that Google+ will now be available to teens. Previously, the social network was exclusively for adults over 18, but now anyone with a Google Account can use it (13+ in most countries).

This policy change comes with new safety features for teen users. They will get a warning pop-up before posting publicly. Only people in teens' circles can contact them by default. If a stranger joins a Hangout in which a teen is participating, the young person is temporarily removed and asked if they want to rejoin.

Teens sure do love their texting. New data from Nielsen proves it.

According to an analysis of 65,000+ mobile subscribers' phone bills, U.S. teens have tripled their data usage. In the third quarter of 2011, teens aged 13-17 averaged 320 MB of data per month. This number has increased 256% over the last year, and not surprisingly teens are are consuming data faster than any other age group. But when it comes to data usage, boys are consuming 382 MB per month while girls only use 266 MB. This is not the case when it comes to texting.

Teenagers are considering spending less time on Facebook than they did before "annoyances" like the news ticker popped up, according to a new report from NYC-based agency Mr Youth. The report surveyed 2,000 teens nationwide ages 14-17.

As budding social creatures, teens value Facebook for the same reasons the original Facebook users did: visiting friends' profiles, commenting on friends' walls, and chatting. 47% said they'll continue using it as they did before, but only 4% said they will increase the time they spend there and 10% said they would leave Facebook all together.

Moral panic. Time and time again, changes occur that make some people feel as though the very fabric of society is at risk. Those changes can be cultural; they can be technological. Often, they involve activities associated with and undertaken by youth.

It's no surprise then that of mobile phones and children have repeatedly elicited moral panic. According to a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds own cellphones. Project Tomorrow's Speak Up 2010 survey found that 20% of children from kindergarten through second grade said they owned cellphones, and 29% of those from third through fifth grade said they did. These children don't just own feature phones either; an increasing number say they own smartphones and have access not just to mobile voice, but texting and data plans as well.

New data from Nielsen out today delves into the behavior of the youngest mobile consumers: the American teenager. The study further solidifies what we've known for some time - teens are heavy-duty users of text messaging services. No other demographic group texts as much as teens do, with an average of 3,339 texts sent and received per month. (For girls, it's even higher - 4,050 texts per month!)

But the study also revealed that teens are now turning to mobile applications, too, with 38% of teens using downloadable apps like those from Facebook, Pandora and YouTube. And usage in this area is growing, says Nielsen.

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.

"Safety is Facebook's top priority," writes Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan on a company blog post introducing the social network's new Safety Center, a revamped help portal featuring educational information for users, with sections dedicated to parents, teens, teachers and law enforcement professionals. It's a somewhat ironic statement from a company that recently prompted its 400-plus million users to accept "recommended" changes that opened up their data - including status updates, photos, videos, links and friend lists - to a public audience, revealing details that many users assumed were private.

Around the same time as the "privacy debacle," as we like to call it, unfolded, Facebook also announced a "Safety Advisory Board," a group whose purpose is to review safety-related procedures and documentation as well as make suggestions regarding best practices and other procedures. How about this safe practice, Facebook: don't publicize people's private information?

"Teens don't tweet." Over the past few weeks, this fact has been reported time and time again by analysts, bloggers, and even mainstream media. Why the obsession with the teenage crowd on Twitter? Perhaps it's simply because adults can't believe that they, not teens, for once are responsible for the birth of an Internet phenomenon. But before all you adults get too comfortable with your Twitter dominance, take a look at the recent data from comScore. It appears that the youngest Twitter users - those in the 12-24 bracket - are now the fastest-growing segment of Twitter's population. So the kids don't tweet? Looks like they may start soon if this new data is to be believed.

Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern at analyst firm Morgan Stanley recently helped compile a report about teenage media habits. Overnight, his findings have become a sensation...which goes to show that people are either obsessed with what "the kids" are into or there's a distinctive lack of research being done on this demographics' media use. Robson's report isn't even based on any sort of statistical analysis, just good ol' fashioned teenage honesty. And what was it that he said to cause all this attention? Only that teens aren't into traditional media (think TV, radio, newspapers) and yet they're eschewing some new media, too, including sites like Twitter.

This may sound like a joke, but it's not: researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have found that too much Facebook usage can leave you more prone to anxiety and depression...that is, if you're a teenage girl. In a study, a group of 13-year old girls were evaluated by psychology professor Dr. Joanne Davila and her colleague, Lisa Starr. A year later, the researchers followed up with the girls, testing them for depressive symptoms.