Teens! On the Internet! At the library! (Photo: flickr.com/vancouverpubliclibrary

Pity the parentals: They don't just have to make it through the terrible teenage years, but now the Internet exists to make everything worse. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, the most common worry isn't stranger danger or cyberbullying or even embarrassing Facebook photos. Parents are worried about advertisers.

Specifically, 81 percent of parents surveyed are worried about how much advertisers can learn about their kids' behavior online. 46 percent are “very” concerned. In fact, they're so very worried that 44 percent actually read the privacy polices for websites and social networks. Now that is love. Or, perhaps, misplaced anxiety.

Mary Madden, Research Associate for the Project and a co-author of the report, said in a statement:

“Parents are anxious about a wide range of online risks for their children, but it is particularly striking that their current level of worry about data collection by advertisers meets or exceeds other concerns about their child’s online activity.”

Let's face it, big data is far more appealing as a theoretical technology than as a real tool used to foist Nikes on your 14-year-old. And the study comes just as the federal government updates the rules for enforcing Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, to account for all the technological advances since the late 90s.

Other worries are exactly what you'd expect after years of Dateline specials and Facebook fiascos: 72 percent fret about how their kids interact with strangers; 69 percent of parents are bothered about how their kids manage their online reputation (with 49 percent "very" concerned). There's a reason Eric Schmidt recommends having the talk about online privacy even before the birds and the bees.

We can't help but feel for the teens, though: Apparently 66 percent of parents who have kids 12 to 17 now have social networking profiles. According to one teen interviewed for the report:

Female (age 13): “I know for some of my friends on Facebook, some of their family members are really obnoxious.  Someone will change their status update to “going to the park” and then you’ll see eighty family members saying, “Have fun at the park.”

At least we know that no matter how far technology advances, teenagers will remain as surly as ever.

"I can't believe you think I like attention!"

"Warning to parents," Vator News cried out yesterday, "this is what your teen does online." Exclamation points implied! So what's the terrifying new teen pastime parents should be panicked about? According to Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, teenagers are, get this, using online video.

The actual study doesn't adopt Vator New's fear-mongering tone, except in the way that all sentences about the online activities of teenagers sound like they're pulled from a "Nightline" investigation. "Nearly 2 in 5 online teens (37%) say they have video chatted with someone else using applications such as Skype, iChat or Googletalk." Ahhhhh, lock up your kids.

The study looks at habits around shooting, sharing, and streaming, where the gender divide seems to have closed. "One major difference between now and 2006 is that online girls are just as likely these days to upload video as online boys," say the researchers. Some interesting demographic trends also come into light when it comes to chatting.

Forty-two percent of girls who use the Internet say they have video-chatted, compared to 33 percent of boys. White teenagers who are online are more likely to video chat than Latino teenagers who use the Internet--41 percent versus 28 percent. Although the study notes, "There are no statistically significant differences between online black youth and either white or Latino youth in video chatting."

Parents's income and education are also a factor:

Online teens from families with the lowest levels of parental education – where a parent has not received a high school diploma – are much less likely than others to video chat with just 14% of teens in those families video chatting, compared with 40% of teens with parents with higher levels of education.

In a similar vein, teen internet users from higher income families are more likely to video chat than lower income teens. Of online teens from families earning $75,000 or more annually, 46% use video chat, while 32% of online teens from families earning under $50,000 annually use these services.

Teenagers who use Facebook and Twitter are also more inclined to video chat. The study says, 41 percent of Facebook users video chat compared to only 25 percent of non-users. With Twitter it's 60 percent of users, compared with 33 percent of non-users.

In Vator News parlance, that probably makes social media a gateway drug, right?