For my Project 52 post, I thought I’d comment about a recent Pew report has come to my attention via DownloadSquad that says that young people are blogging less:
Pew Internet released a report yesterday called Social Media and Young Adults that shows teen blogging down by 50% over the past four years, even as blogging increased among those over 30 years old.
The report also shows that teens are not very likely to be Twitter users (only 8% of internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 report using the service), even though they are heavy users of almost all other online applications; in fact, 73% of “wired American teens” are social networking website users. Twitter seems to stick out as a service that younger people are not as interested in.
The report is really talking about teens – 12 to 17 year olds – and I have to say that the conclusions follow my observations. While I grew up before the Internet and social networks became ubiquitous, I remember MSN and ICQ were used widely. With Facebook and MySpace (and their in-house chats), it seems to me that most young people are more interested in talking with each other.
DownloadSquad also concludes that young people aren’t “content creators”. I’m not sure I agree with that. Rather, I think young people only share their content – photos and videos – with their friends, rather than putting them on Flickr or a blog.
I'd be surprised if these findings didn't also apply to older people who used to blog. Two years ago I used to blog for my friends an family a lot more than I do now – because facebook is easier and more effective at achieving the same thing.
It's true – I think a lot of people give up blogging (or tweeting) because no one is reading their posts. At least with Facebook, you know your content is being “pushed” to your friends.