Study indicates a decline in blogging among teens

A study released by the the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project has indicated that blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults since 2006.

As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro‐blogging’ for microblogging with status updates. 

Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006. Blog commenting has also dropped among teens. 

• 14 percent of online teens now say they blog, down from 28 percent of teen internet users in 2006.
• This decline is also reflected in the lower incidence of teen commenting on blogs within social networking websites; 52 percent of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76 percent who did so in 2006. 
• By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

While blogging among adults as a whole has remained steady, the prevalence of blogging within specific age groups has changed dramatically in recent years. Specifically, a sharp decline in blogging by young adults has been tempered by a corresponding increase in blogging among older adults.

• In December 2007, 24 percent of online 18‐29 year olds reported blogging, compared with 7 percent of those thirty and older.
• By 2009, just 15 percent of internet users ages 18‐29 maintain a blog—a nine percentage point drop in two years. However, 11 percent of internet users ages thirty and older now maintain a personal blog.

Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has risen significantly, yet there are shifts and some drops in the proportion of teens using several social networking site features.

• 73 percent of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55 percent) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65 percent did so in February 2008.
• As the teen social networking population has increased, the popularity of some sites’ features has shifted. Compared with SNS activity in February 2008, a smaller proportion of teens in mid‐2009 were sending daily messages to friends via SNS, or sending bulletins, group messages or private messages on the sites.  
• 47 percent of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37 percent in November 2008.
• Young adults act much like teens in their tendency to use these sites. Fully 72 percent of online 18‐29 year olds use social networking websites, nearly identical to the rate among teens, and significantly higher than the 40 percent of internet users ages 30 and up who use these sites.
• Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites – 52 percent – say they have two or more different profiles. That is up from 42 percent who had multiple profiles in May 2008. 
• Facebook is currently the most commonly‐used online social network among adults. Among adult profile owners 73 percent have a profile on Facebook, 48 percent have a profile on MySpace and 14 percent have a LinkedIn profile.1 
• The specific sites on which young adults maintain their profiles are different from those used by older adults: Young profile owners are much more likely to maintain a profile on MySpace (66 percent of young profile owners do so, compared with just 36 percent of those thirty and older) but less likely to have a profile on the professionally‐oriented LinkedIn (7 percent vs. 19 percent). In contrast, adult profile owners under thirty and those thirty and older are equally likely to maintain a profile on Facebook (71 percent of young profile owners do so, compared with 75 percent of older profile owners).

Teens are not using Twitter in large numbers. While teens are bigger users of almost all other online applications, Twitter is an exception.

• 8 percent of internet users ages 12‐17 use Twitter.2 This makes Twitter as common among teens as visiting a virtual world, and far less common than sending or receiving text messages as 66 percent of teens do, or going online for news and political information, done by 62 percent of online teens.
• Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger counterparts; 10 percent of online teens ages 14‐17 do so, compared with 5 percent of those ages 12‐13. 
• High school age girls are particularly likely to use Twitter. Thirteen percent of online girls ages 14‐17 use Twitter, compared with 7 percent of boys that age. 
• Using different wording, we find that 19 percent of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view the updates of others online. 
• Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One‐third of online 18‐29 year olds post or read status updates