A recent 16-country study of teen and young adult web shopping habits reveals that American youths are the biggest on-line spenders at 43%, followed by Swedes (41%), Germans (33%), Canadians (25%) and the British (22%). But Ipsos-Reid’s The Face of the Web: Youth survey also shows that while 54% of young surfers use the Internet to ferret out info about products and services, only 27% have actually made an on-line purchase.

So what’s on the average teen Web shopper’s list? Music rates at the top (19%), with clothing (16%) and books (14%) coming in a close second and third. Male teens are the primary purchasers of video games on-line, while girls and young women are three times as likely to buy clothes on the web than their male counterparts.

In terms of payment, roughly 43% of participants use their own credit cards, while 28% charge to someone else’s plastic, generally a parent’s. Less than 1% of those surveyed have glommed onto e-cash initiatives, while 23% use non-credit forms of payment, like COD, cheques or money orders.