1) With Facebook, they can’t simply make a new account. This account MUST be tied to their .edu email address so if they lose one or the other, they’re in trouble because there’s no opportunity to just rebuild.

2) The majority of high school teens use shared computers. This is either because they are using a computer in a school/library or because they are using a computer that is shared with their siblings and/or parents. College students are more likely to have their own laptops and i’ve found that it’s a common gift that parents give their kids when they go off to college (and sometimes in their senior year). Having a stable computer that one uses and does not share means that you can have the computer remember your passwords for you. You are also then more likely to use IMAP or POP for email rather than webmail (although i’ve seen a lot of college students choose Gmail over using Outlook or Eudora or Mail because they like the interface better).

I should of course note that a trend does not mean 100% of teens are losing their passwords, but the frequency in which i’ve seen this behavior and attitude in my discussions with teens is astonishing. And when i used to work tech support, the numbers seeking password recovery were huge, particularly with younger users. In talking to MySpace, they say that password recovery is by far the most common thing that they receive and that many of those seeking passwords don’t remember their password to their email address either. So while the likelihood of teens losing passwords and not caring is bound to be less than 50% of all teens, the fact that it’s above 5% makes it very different than adult patterns. Of course, while i see this pattern, i can’t get a handle on the frequency using qualitative methods.