MUMBAI: The latest eMarketer's report suggests that among tweens and young teens some 20 million of them use the Internet and by 2010, 71 per cent of kids ages 8-11 will be online.

Tweens online may well be marketers' next big coveted demographic. Children between the ages of 8 and 14 -- are not only strong in number but interestingly, in purchasing power, informs an official release.

It is estimated that over half of boys and girls own and use a computer, VCR, DVD player and mobile phone. In one survey quoted by eMarketer, tweens report that they love watching TV. But another study points out that children 8 to 18 spend fully one-quarter of their media time multi-tasking among media.

"Tweens and young teens may be the first generation that will come into adulthood fully expecting to obtain their media on a variety of platforms," says eMarketer's senior analyst and author of the report Debra Aho Williamson.

The younger group plays more games, everyone prefers instant messaging to e-mail, and as tweens pass into their teenage years they devote more time to downloading music. More than one-third of teens ages 12 to 14 frequent MySpace, according to one study. And, the hot growth opportunity for wireless carriers is the tween market. Harris Interactive data from 2006 shows that 23 per cent of children ages 8 to 12 own a mobile phone, up from 12 per cent the previous year.