The vast majority of online teens report going online from home and say that it is the place they go online most often. Close to nine in ten (87%) of teen internet users say they go online from home, a number virtually unchanged from when we first asked the question in 2000.

Seventy-eight percent of online teens report that they go online from school, up from 64% of online teens in 2000. Accessing the internet from a friend or relative’s house is also on the rise, with 74% of teens reporting that they access the internet from those locations, up from 64% in 2000.

More than half (54%) of all online teens say they have gone online from a library, up from a little more than a third of teens (36%) who reported utilizing library internet resources in 2000. Nine percent of teens say they access the internet from a community center, like a Boys’ or Girls’ club, or a religiously affiliated youth center.

When asked where they go online most often, three-quarters of internet-using teens (74%) say they go online most often from home. Another 17% of wired teens say that they go online most often from school, and 9% say they go online most from someplace else, like a youth center, a library or a friend’s house. Since 2000, more teens report going online most frequently from places other than their home. In 2000, of teens who went online from more than one place, 83% went online mostly from home, 11% mostly from school and 5% from someplace else. These changes over the past four years may reflect the impact of the e-Rate program bringing better and more comprehensive connectivity to schools, the dropping price of personal computers, and the increasing importance of the internet in the academic and personal lives of teens.