"Tweens and young teens may be the first generation that will come into adulthood fully expecting to obtain their media on a variety of platforms," says eMarketer's senior analyst and author of the report Debra Aho Williamson.

The younger group plays more games, everyone prefers instant messaging to e-mail, and as tweens pass into their teenage years they devote more time to downloading music. More than one-third of teens ages 12 to 14 frequent MySpace, according to one study. And, the hot growth opportunity for wireless carriers is the tween market. Harris Interactive data from 2006 shows that 23 per cent of children ages 8 to 12 own a mobile phone, up from 12 per cent the previous year.