Pew identifies social networking gender split

Social networks are fuelling the rise in number of teenagers with personal information online, according to research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

by Helen Leggatt

Ninety-three percent of all teens are online, up from 73 percent in 2000 and 87 percent in 2004. And, in a culture where it’s increasingly the norm to create and share information, 64 percent of online teens have contributed to online content in one way or another, up from 57 percent in 2004.

Almost 40 percent of online teens share video, photos and other personal art, 30 percent write a blog, and 26 percent produced mashups, found Pew.

Pew’s research also threw up a gender split when it came to online social networking activities. Girls, it found, were far more likely to blog than boys. Thirty-five percent of all online teen girls blog, compared with 20 percent of online teen boys.

"Virtually all of the growth in teen blogging between 2004 and 2006 is due to the increased activity of girls," said the study (.pdf). "Older teen girls are still far more likely to blog when compared with older boys, but younger girl bloggers have grown at such a fast clip that they are now outpacing even the older boys."

Boys, on the other hand, traditionally being more visually stimulated, were more likely to post videos online. Just 10 percent of girls did so compared to nearly 20 percent of boys.