I've been digging around for days looking for global data on the number/percentage of youth (any segment of ages between 9 and 24) who use the Internet/use email/use IM, and I've come up with very, very little.
You are right - I have seen very few surveys which ask about IM as well as email. There have been some good qualitative studies though (see below). Our 2001 e-Living survey has some results on net/email/sms etc usage by the 16+ group (Rich Ling again :-). See http://www.eurescom.de/e-living/deliverables/e-living-D7.4-Age-Gender-Social...
I'd also love a comparative look at IM versus SMS use in a variety of countries. In countries where SMS use is so prevalent among youth, is IM ever used?
yes, extensively. Often to the same people as they are sending SMS/talking to/emailing. Gitte mentioned Sonia Livingstone's work - in a more recent project (funded by BT) she has used qualitative methods to look at how young people use SMS, IM, email etc as part of their communications repertoire (see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/whosWho/soniaLivingstone.htm and section 4 of http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/pdf/btreport_familiesinternet.pdf). She is currently writing this up as a book I think. Ben -- Dr Ben Anderson www.essex.ac.uk/chimera +44 (0) 7710 187 806