Girls 15-17 are Leading the New Generation Into the Blogosphere
The Pew Internet and American Life Project is a research group that looks at how the internet affects and is affected by culture in America. This particular report just came out and talks about how the current generation of teenagers are very much into "remixing content" from the internet, be it words, images, music, etc., mostly in the form of blogs. The most exciting part to me, though, was the fact that the leader in the blogosphere among teens are teenage girls age 15-17:
Older girls ages 15-17 are the most likely to blog; 25% of online girls in this age group keep a blog, compared with 15% of older boys who are online. About 18% of younger teens of both sexes blog.
First off, it’s impressive that so many teens are blogging, but I think it’s spectacular that girls are taking the lead here. My take is that for a long time, the entry point into the computer world has really been gaming, which is for the most part designed for boys (now, I know at least one amazing woman who is very much the exception here, but she knows who she is and she’s always the exception :). Blogs, on the other hand, provide a very different outlet - now people can create a presence on the internet and become known and respected for it for reasons other than how many Dweebons they blew up on level Zogotreeb.
You can download the full text of the study here: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp
