CHICAGO – Nearly three in five school-age teens with Internet access have created online content, including Web pages with artwork, photos and stories — and about a fifth have their own blogs, which also allow friends and other readers to create feedback postings.
Those are some of the findings from a survey of 12- to 17-year-olds conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
The survey also found that older school-age girls with online access were most likely to keep a blog (search). About a quarter of girls, ages 15 to 17, did so, compared with 15 percent of boys in that age group.
Among adults, Pew says about 7 percent of Internet users have created their own blogs, or online diaries. And while 26 percent of adults say they read blogs, 38 percent of young people with online access said they do so.
Researchers note that the main reason teens are drawn to blogs is a wish to keep in touch with one another.
"Blogging for teens is about staying tuned into their friendship networks, not about politics or people getting in trouble at school, which are two of the main narratives that journalists have covered in recent months," says Amanda Lenhart (search), a senior researcher at Pew who helped compile the report.
The findings, which have a margin of error of 3 percentage points, are based on a random telephone survey of about 1,100 young people and their parents, conducted Oct. 16 to Nov. 28, 2004.
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