Business Opportunities Weblog

U.S. Teens Lose Interest In Blogging

By on February 9, 2010 in Ideas

Reuters is reporting that blogging by teenagers and young adults has dropped by half over the past three years as they turn instead to texting and social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study shows.

The study by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site.

According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 — and only 8 percent were using Twitter.

“It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape,” Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.

Smith said the report’s authors attributed the decline in blogging to the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook, which emphasize short status updates over personal journals.

According to the study, 73 percent of teens who were online used social networking sites.

He also cited the ubiquity of cell phones. Much of the communication between young people now takes place on mobile devices, which don’t lend themselves to long-form writing.

Photo by Reuters.

blogging teens

Rich Whittle has added 6,226 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • http://www.business-opportunities.biz Dane Carlson

    Too bad for them. I guess we’ll keep blogging for the adults.

  • http://wahm.business-opportunities.biz Angela Shupe

    It makes sense to me. Many kids (including me when I was 16) started blogging to keep in touch with friends or to make new ones online. With things like Facebook and Twitter around, blogging isn’t exactly necessary. Through these sites kids can post about their day and they only need to use a sentence or two.

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