Washington (ip-192.com): Teens and young adults like Facebook, but they are not so keen on Twitter, according to the Pew Internet Project's report. "Out of all the data, we think in some ways it's most surprising to see a decline in blogging, Social Media and Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults," says Pew researcher and co-author Amanda Lenhart.
Not surprisingly, teens are wired: 93 percent of teens surveyed went online; 63 percent on a daily basis. Lenhart says blogging among teens and young adults has dropped to half what it was in 2006. In that year, 28 percent of teens ages 12-17 and adults ages 18-29 were bloggers. In contrast, by the fall of 2009, the numbers had dropped to 14 percent of teens and 15 percent of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online adults over 30 who were bloggers rose from 7 percent in 2006 to 11 percent in 2009.
"What we think is really going on here - why young people aren't doing blogs anymore - is that there's been a move from MySpace, which put blogging front and center, to Facebook, which doesn't have that," Lenhart says. One student said teenagers had lost interest in blogging because they needed to type quickly and "people don't find reading that fun".
Twitter hasn't gained much ground with teens. Only 8 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds who go online say they ever use it. That's unusual, because teenagers have a history of being early adopters of nearly every online activity, according to Lenhart.
The study found that almost seven in ten teens own a computer, with two-thirds of those between 18 and 29 owning a laptop. About 58 percent of adults own a desktop.
The study was conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
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