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wITH TWITTER, FACEBOOK, ETC., IS BLOGGING WHAT IS NOW CONSIDERED 'OLD FASHIONED'??? lol
Is blogging a slog? Some young people think so
A
new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form
blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief,
and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away.
Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail — still useful,
just not sexy.
"Remember when 'You've got mail!' used to produce a moment of enthusiasm and not dread?" asks Danah Boyd,
a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and
Society. Now when it comes to blogs, she says, "people focus on using
them for what they're good for and turning to other channels for more
exciting things."
Those channels might include anything from social networking sites to others that feature games or video.
The
study, released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life
Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now
say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006.
And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends'
blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.
Pew found a similar drop in blogging among 18- to 29-year-olds.
Overall,
Pew estimates that roughly one in 10 online adults maintain a blog — a
number that has remained consistent since 2005, when blogs became a
more mainstream activity. In the U.S., that would mean there are more
than 30 million adults who blog.
"That's
a pretty remarkable thing to have gone from zero to 30 million in the
last 10 years," says David Sifry, founder of blog search site Technorati.
But according to the data, that population is aging.
The
Pew study found, for instance, that the percentage of Internet users
age 30 and older who maintain a blog increased from 7 percent in 2007
to 11 percent in 2009.
Pew's over-18 data, collected in the last half of last year, were based on interviews with 2,253 adults and have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.
The under-18 data came from phone interviews with 800 12- to
17-year-olds and their parents. The margin of error for that data was
plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
So why are young people less interested in blogging?
The
explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey
found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access
to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.
With
social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and
that has "kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging," says
Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest
study.
More young people are also
accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the
need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to
29-year-olds had done so.
All of that rings true to Sarah Rondeau, a freshman at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
"It's
a matter of typing quickly. People these days don't find reading that
fun," the 18-year-old student says. She loves Facebook and has recently
started using Twitter to share pictures of her dorm room and blurbs about campus life, which
are, in turn, shared on the Holy Cross Web site for prospective
students.
Meanwhile, New Yorker Jackie
Huang hasn't made a posting on her long-form blog in two years, and she
now uses Facebook and Twitter because her friends do — though she's
still not too hot on tweeting.
Now 25, she started blogging when she was a college freshman, using Xanga and then Wordpress to tell friends, family and a few strangers about anything from travel experiences to pop culture to politics.
"My blog was my own little soapbox," says Huang, who now works
for a communications agency. "Unfortunately, I don't think I'm
interesting enough for my followers to want to know where I am every
hour of the day and what I'm thinking. I'm not Ashton Kutcher, and I don't post racy pictures of Demi Moore in her skivvies."
Few doubt that blogging will die. Lenhart suspects that those who blog
for personal reasons may focus more on events — a wedding, a trip, a
baby's birth.
Arax-Rae Van Buren, who writes about trends, travel and food on
her Kiss and Type blog, is relaunching her site with a mobile audience
in mind. "It is imperative that the site design is translatable to a
phone," says the 24-year-old New Yorker.
There also are early signs that "microblogging" on sites such
as Twitter might actually create long-form bloggers out of people who
get frustrated by the constraints of the 140-word limit. Already, sites
such as Tumblr and FriendFeed have emerged to allow for expansion of
thought and content, though it remains to be seen whether those
services will catch on with younger people.
"Blogging is actually a quite involved form of self-expression. It takes a lot of time and effort," says Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communications studies at Northwestern University.
She and other tech experts also suspect that fewer young people
have an interest in sharing their every thought with the whole world.
"Five years ago blogging was a club," says Sifry of Technorati.
"There was this wonderful, delicious feeling of being able to talk
privately or semi-privately with people who shared your interests. And
there were few consequences of being able to share with your friends on
a blog.
"I think we're seeing a deeper awareness of the perception of privacy and how that can affect your life if it's violated."