Over half of US teens use Social Networking sites

Survey finds girls into blogging, boys into watching videos

24 December 2007 10:00 GMT / By Stuart Miles

93% of American teenagers use the internet with over half (55%) saying they have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace according to a new survey by Pew Internet in America.

Of those who where questioned 47% of online teens have uploaded photos where others can see them, though many restrict access to the photos in some way; and 14% of online teens have posted videos online.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project also found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

The number of teen bloggers has also nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006 according to the research. About 19% of online teens blogged at the end of 2004, and 28% of online teens were bloggers at the end of 2006. Overall, girls dominate the teen blogosphere; 35% of all online teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online teen boys.

This gender gap for blogging has grown larger over time. Virtually all of the growth in teen blogging between 2004 and 2006 is due to the increased activity of girls. Older teen girls are still far more likely to blog when compared with older boys (38% vs. 18%), but younger girl bloggers have grown at such a fast clip that they are now outpacing even the older boys (32% of girls ages 12-14 blog vs. 18% of boys ages 15-17) say PEW.

In comparison 57% of online teens say that they watch videos on video sharing sites such as YouTube. Older online teens, especially older online boys (15-17), are more likely to report watching videos on video sharing sites when compared with younger teens.

Online teen boys are also twice as likely as online teen girls to post video files (19% vs. 10%). Not even older girls – a highly-wired and active segment of the teen population - can compete with boys in this instance; 21% of older boys post videos, while just 10% of older girls do so.