Girls Just Want to Be Plugged In -- to Everything

Like a lot of 14-year-olds these days, Julia Schwartz's cellphone is more reflective of her personality than her bedroom. It's decorated with Asian good-luck charms and carries snippets of her favorite Sugarcult song and video clips of the She Wants Revenge concert she saw with her older sister.

She uses the phone to text-message friends more than call them. When she's not texting, she's surfing iTunes or watching TV or exchanging rapid-fire AOL instant messages on her wireless laptop. Or she's doing all three while fending off her mother's steady stream of inquiries about what exactly she's doing.

Julia and her peers have vastly more access to a broader and more global spectrum of pop culture than any generation beforethem. Her favorite movies, music and TV shows are less a reflection of her age or status than they are of the infinite array of content available now. She's a fan of "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Dana Carvey -- whose career peaked in her infancy -- and an avid devotee of the Finnish rock band H.I.M. She switches between the science-fiction stories on FanFiction.net and an old Anne Rice novel, the cartoon "The Fairly OddParents" on Nickelodeon and a video clip of comic Dat Phan posted on his MySpace.com page. She rents a DVD every week (most recent fave was the 2004 film "Bring It On Again") but only occasionally sees a movie in the theater; her home is her entertainment center.

"I find there's always something to occupy me," she said, "just not always something new."

Julia's voracious appetite for all types of entertainment -- and the tech-savvy ways she consumes it -- is typical of girls her age, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll that surveyed the habits of 12- to 24-year-olds. Girls ages 12 to 14 are the most deeply motivated by TV: 65% say they are influenced by a TV show or network, are more likely to multi-task than boys of their age group and are easily bored -- 41% say there are too few choices of entertainment.

They are the most sensitive to degrading depictions of women -- 78% find this type of content most offensive -- and the most enthusiastic about viewing content on iPods, laptops and cellphones. They're also the most carefully monitored by parents: 68% say their parents know how they spend their time online.