Issue Date: May 21, 2006

In this article: Highlights from the Teens & Celebrities Survey Results Full Results: Teens & Celebrities More on our Teen Surveys

19th Annual Teen Survey

Exclusive results: Teens & Celebrities
"Teen People's" managing editor, Lori Majewski, shares her unique perspective as we explore the surprising responses American teens gave on the subject of fame and fortune.

Survey Results How influential are teen favorites such as Lindsay Lohan (left) Nick Lachey and Beyonce Knowles? Our survey partners were "Extra" and YouthNoise.com.

When I was a teenager growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s, my girlfriends and I were obsessed with Duran Duran. We went to see their concerts, swooned over their videos on MTV, and snatched up every album, 45 and 12-inch remix we could find (yes, this was in the days of vinyl and cassettes). Although our goal was to someday meet any or all of the band members, we never thought we would get closer to them and their fabulous VIP lives than the posters on our walls. The same went for other friends who adored Rob Lowe and the Coreys (Haim and Feldman). These celebrities may as well have lived on another planet.

One could argue that the relationship between teens and celebrities had remained relatively unchanged from the Elvis Presley mania of the mid- 1950s to the boy-band craze of the late '90s. However, as managing editor of "Teen People," I have learned that this generation of teenagers is not satisfied with merely staring at posters or even rubbing shoulders with their favorite stars -- they want to be them. And in their minds, it is far from an impossible dream.

Consider the currency of the many celebrity weeklies and websites: showing boldfaced names doing banal things like taking the garbage to the curb, talking on their cellphones or making the ever-popular Starbucks run. Today's kids constantly see stars being just like the rest of us, so it's little wonder they believe they can be just like them.

Furthering this notion? Reality TV. Teens know that at any minute, MTV might come to their town and turn them and their friends into the next big things, just like it did with the young stars of the California-based "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County." The real-life soap is so popular that one of its main players, Lauren "LC" Conrad, 20, scored her own spinoff, "The Hills;" meanwhile, her Laguna nemesis, Kristin Cavallari, 19, is being offered movie roles.

The more proactive star wannabes don't wait for fame to come to them. They try out for TV talent shows like "American Idol." Hey, even if they can't carry a tune, they can make a spectacle of themselves during the audition and score big money, like "Idol's" William Hung. Teens who don't want to subject themselves to Simon Cowell have found other paths to stardom. By uploading inexpensive homemade videos to websites such as YouTube.com, one can literally become an overnight sensation. Using her webcam to capture herself and another girl singing the Backstreet Boys' "Get Down," one girl recently received more than 152,000 hits with her cute but unremarkable clip.

Because so many teens see themselves as stars, it's no wonder they have a different relationship with bona fide celebrities than any previous generation. USA WEEKEND Magazine's Teens & Celebrities survey reveals that although more than a third (36%) believe talent is more important than personality in a celebrity, only slightly fewer teens (32%) said personality outranks talent. So of course teens think they have a decent shot at stardom when they don't think it requires them to be a singer or actor of extraordinary skill.

The survey also finds that teens want to look and act like famous people, and although that has been true through the ages, they're taking more drastic steps to do so. About 60% think teens want to pierce a body part or get a tattoo because a celebrity has. Roughly half agree that their own peers drink or smoke cigarettes because they see their idols doing it. And 77% believe that when a star loses weight, teenagers are prone do the same -- although only 13% admit to having gone on a diet to look more like a celebrity.

There's a paradox in these survey results: Teens aspire to be like stars, but they don't necessarily view them as role models. When it comes to issues such as war and politics, celebrities rank dead last on the list of people teens say influence their opinions, behind parents, friends, teachers and the media. That's why they tend to tune out most stars who talk about environmental issues and world peace. According to the survey, 78% of teens say they don't think more about charitable causes when celebrities participate in fundraisers, and more than half (52%) suspect that stars use charity events for self-promotion.

These stats don't mean we're raising a generation of skeptics -- just smart kids. Dubbed by USA WEEKEND as "Generation Give" last year, today's teens are able to distinguish a passionate star from one who's just looking for good press. There are true celebrity humanitarians, like Angelina Jolie, who demonstrates her commitment to developing nations. Seeing her practice what she preaches makes teenagers, many of whom call her an inspiration, put even more energy into doing good works. Indeed, in last year's Teens & Volunteering survey, 96% of teens say they volunteer.

Every year, "Teen People's" April issue features "20 Teens Who Will Change the World." And every year, we find that the scope of what these teens are doing -- and where they're doing it -- broadens. In 2006, we found teens who volunteered in locales like Sri Lanka, Guinea and Peru. At our luncheon honoring these kids, celebrity host Nick Lachey called them an inspiration and was just as excited to meet these do-gooders as they were to meet him. It makes you wonder: Maybe by the time the next generation of teens comes around, the stars will be striving to be just like them.

Photographs: Lindsay Lohan: Jean-Paul Aussenard, Wireimage; Nick Lachey: Fernando Allende, startraksphoto; Beyonce Knowles: Brad Barket, Getty Images

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Last fall, more than 17,000 students in grades 6 to 12 took USA WEEKEND's 19th annual teen survey in themagazine or at our website. Highlights from the unscientific survey are reported here.
Full Results: Teens & Celebrities

This issue's teen editors: Hannah Church, of Charlottesville, Va., and Bryan Jackson, of Torrance, Calif., won a trip to our officesin McLean, Va., to help edit this cover story. Jackson enjoys going to the movies, but hedoesn't focus on the stars' personal lives. Church says there's interest in celebrities because they're like American royalty.