New survey shows blogging is less preferred by young internet users

If the outcome of the recent US survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project is any indication of the future of social networking, blogs are less preferred by the younger generation. The study shows that the young bloggers of the age groups 12-17 years and 18-29 years have come down drastically, with the former having halved to 14 per cent since 2006. The study also showed that about 55 per cent of 18-29 year-olds and 27 percent of 12-17 year-olds prefer to access the internet from mobile phones. The possible reason quoted is the preference for short and snappy updates, text messaging and similar features, while blogging requires typing longer text and text blogs which are content-driven needs patience to read the blogs.

Interestingly, the study also shows that there is a small increase in blogging by those who are 30 years or older, whose numbers had increased from 7 per cent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009. The study suggests that this trend is responsible for the prevalence of blogging among overall grown-up internet population and their numbers remaining steady at about 10 per cent.

In recent times there have been tremendous technological improvements in the tools and other features showcased in social networking sites because of which such sites continue to grow at very fast rates. Because of this the younger generation seems to be exchanging macro-blogging for micro-blogging with status updates, which has made blogs less preferred by them. Any way, Twitter is not to be blamed for the new trends.

Twitter has emerged as a revolution in micro-blogging with those 140 characters, but it is not the reason for the reduced interest in blogging by the younger generation, as teens are not using Twitter in large numbers, although teens have been the biggest users of almost all other online applications, but Twitter is an exception, the study says. On the other hand, there is a surge of tweets from men and women of older age groups tweeting away on all possible topics or grabbing attention to what they find interesting with 140 characters.