Blogs show their age: Research finds the young have other things to do
Share with others:
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, it appears that all the world is a blog and all the men and women merely bloggers. Since the world became Internet-connected over the last two decades, Web blogs -- or blogs -- have become ubiquitous.
It is logical to suppose that this fresh medium of political and personal observations would be the natural playground of young people who inhabit a brave new world. But the Pew Research Center has come out with a counter-intuitive finding: Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006. At least in that world, blogs do not rule.
The Pew report, which can be found at www.pewresearch.org, was part of a project exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the so-called Millennial Generation, those born between 1981 and 2000 -- the first generation to come of age in the new millennium.
According to the findings, 14 percent of online teens now say they blog, down from 28 percent in 2006. Teens are also commenting less on blogs within social networking websites. In the meantime, adults online are blogging at the same steady rate (roughly 1-in-10 maintain a personal online journal or blog).
This doesn't mean that teens or young people have abandoned the new technology. LOL! Some 93 percent of teens and young adults go online. They just have different tastes. Facebook is currently the most commonly used online social network site for adults but many young people go to MySpace. Interestingly, Twitter is not big among younger teens, although older teens are more likely to gravitate to it.
As for blogs, these findings beg a question: If their writers are more likely to be older, why aren't their musings characterized by more maturity?
First Published February 14, 2010 12:00 am
