Sixty two percent of teenagers online are currently getting their news-fix over the Internet, a stat that peaks at 77% during major news events. This compares favorably with the 72% of online adults who access the Web for news or political information.

While blogging (15% of youngsters) and Tweeting (8% of teens) don’t look to be capturing the imagination of the young, social networking certainly has. A whopping 73% of wired American teens now use social networking sites (up from 55% three years ago), similarly 72% of online young adults also such sites, both being significantly higher than the 40% of adults who do so.

Overall the survey produces an interesting snapshot of web usage among the young, and it’ll be interesting to see how these trends continue to shift in the future especially as sites like Facebook continue to integrate online news.

Watch the entire interview hosted by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington here : http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3848950

However, the major story this week has been Google v China over the issues of user privacy, cyber attacks and the Great Firewall of China resulting in Google’s likely exit from the Chinese market. Our old friends at VeriSign’s iDefense have indicated they “believe the attack is the work of actors operating on behalf of or in the direct employ of official intelligence entities of the People’s Republic of China”, which could have serious ramifications both politically and for the search engine space.

While Google may be basking in glory over this move to “not be evil”, and Zuckerberg’s comments have been met with some cynicism over whether Facebook, incidentally blocked in China, is reflecting social change or (with 350 million users) driving it. Both acts raise interesting discussions over online privacy and what it means in an increasingly connected world, who do you trust? Let us know your thoughts below!

The entire forty five interview can been seen below, which Schmidt touches upon a number of topics from the forthcoming Chrome OS to the future of super-fast broadband, but our interest was piqued by the discussion on the Real-time search and social media.

Schmidt discusses the value of real-time information sources, which is more than just Twitter and Facebook, with the big challenge not being a question of indexing this data but how to rank and sort it. As we see such a huge increase in social media content it changes the way people consume information and Schmidt believes that “the great challenge of the age” is learning how to rank it all.

Do you think Google is up to the challenge or have Bing stolen a march on the Mountain View giant here?

London already enjoys its position as Facebook’s largest geographical network and the United Kingdom as a whole is second only to the US when it comes to traffic to these social networks reports The Telegraph.

It doesn’t matter if you’re tweeting in London, Little Rock or La Paz there will always been someone to connect with, and as a social media monitoring provider it’s our job to make sure we’re listening to the most relevant conversations across the globe.

Londoners are we driving the adoption of these exciting new technologies or just taking advantage of the office tea break?! Leave us a comment below or send us a tweet @moreovertech