Ask HN: What is a reasonable salary for a teenager to have during an internship?
I won't give the exact field, but it is in the area of product design, graphic design, and programming.
Not nearly enough information to give any kind of estimate, and even with that information, the answer would probably be "it varies" or "whatever you can negotiate".
Edit: Here is some data from University of Waterloo you might find useful - http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/employers/salary.php
Students alternate between school and work terms, so as you slide up the work term levels it will be for students with more academic and internship experiences.
Statistics have shown that many employers may illegally be using interns as free labor. A while back, the New York Times published an article on the topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html
My point is that I don't understand why you assumed that the internship I talk of should be free. You didn't hear enough of the details to make a proper legal stance on the issue, and more often than not employers are not paying interns when they should be.
I see your point, but please reconsider what you wrote.
In college I had a part-time job doing computer repair/maintenance for a small office at $12.50 an hour, and later had a formal internship at a Fortune 500 company that paid $19.50 an hour
All this took place in the greater Seattle area.
Unless there is a compelling reason to work for free (e.g., difficult industry to break in to, extreme desire to work for said company) I would advocate never working for free if you can get paid. Everyone I've known who worked free as an intern (3 people, perhaps not a large enough sample) were treated unacceptably relative to the atmosphere of a professional office. One basically became 12 people's gopher, filling out uninteresting paperwork and rarely learning anything that added value to their ability to work.
In addition, being paid to work puts one in a position to learn to manage their own finances, if only in part. For me this was easily more important than all the technical skills I picked up.
Had one friend who his senior year was making an average of $50+/hr. He was doing 80+ hrs/wk so the overtime, double-time, and weekend-time really added up.
Edit: Also, Boston area.