Digital imagery, Facebook updates, online music collections, email threads, and other immaterial artifacts of today’s online world may be as precious to teenagers as a favorite book that a parent once read to them or a T-shirt worn at a music festival, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have found.

The researchers recruited nine girls and 12 boys, ages 12–17, from middle- and upper-middle-class families who had frequent access to the Internet, mobile phones, and other technology. The researchers interviewed them about their everyday lives, their use of technology, and about the physical and virtual possessions that they valued.

They found that the degree to which users can alter and personalize online objects affects their value. For example, a 17-year-old study participant spent a lot of time developing an avatar for the video game Halo and received a lot of comments and input from friends.

Their work will be presented May 10 at CHI 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, B.C.