By Nancy Hanus
Michigan State University

Twitter has caught fire as a hot social media trend. It's also increasingly being used as an information source, sort of like Google. The first reports of recent catastrophic events such as the Haiti and Chile earthquakes came via Twitter. Yet one group that often leads the pack in social networking - teens - seem to have little use for tweeting. While nearly three-quarters of online teens use social network sites, only 8 percent said they use Twitter. A recent report showed text messaging is the hottest form of communication amid teens: Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day. But the 140 characters in a tweet doesn't appeal quite so much.

While teens may be staying away from Twitter, college students are embracing it in higher numbers, according to the popularity of sites such as CampusTweet.com, where students compete to be the top tweeter at their school. And Twitter is being used as a tool for research and in the classroom, exposing students to uses of Twitter they might not have thought about. One Maryland teacher advocates total access to Internet and social technologies for his students, and incorporates Twitter and other social media in his foreign language lessons by having students collaborate via tweets and Google Wave.

Despite the surveys that say teens don't tweet, there are millions who obviously do. Some of the top tweeting celebs boast millions of followers - and many are obviously teens. Justin Bieber has 2.3 million followers, and is always the top or near the top of trending twitter topics.

Other top tweeters:

• John Mayer: 3.3 million followers
• Ashley Tisdale: 3 million followers
• Coldplay: 2.7 million followers
• Taylor Swift: 3.1 million followers

Student says: It's just an adult thing, according to Yalda Chalabi, 17. Our music teacher kept saying that she would put stuff up for us to follow on Twitter until one day she said, 'OK, who's following me on Twitter?' And no one raised their hand. You keep hearing people talk about it, but I don't know anyone my age that uses it."

Tech columnist says: Twitter is precisely what you want it to be, says David Pogue, personal technology columnist for The New York Times. It can be a business tool, a teenage time-killer, a research assistant, a news source - whatever. There are no rules, or at least none that apply equally well to everyone.

Nancy Hanus, former director of New Media for The Detroit News, is currently the online multiplatform producer/editor-in-residence at The Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences.