CorpComms Magazine

Teenagers are tiring of blogging and are turning to shorter forms of communication, although they show little enthusiasm for Twitter, according to a new survey by Pew Research for its Internet and American Life Project.

It found that the number of 12 to 17 year olds in America who blog has halved to 14 per cent since 2006, when the survey was last conducted.

Teenagers are not using Twitter in large numbers, despite being big users of all other online applications. Just eight per cent use Twitter. However, 13 per cent of teenage girls, aged between 14 and 17, use Twitter, predominantly to follow celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Ashton Kutcher. 

The biggest users of Twitter are young adults. One third of those aged between 18 and 29 years old post or read status updates.

Almost three quarters of teenagers, 73 per cent, use social networking sites, ranking MySpace their favourite, up from 55 per cent in 2006, and 37 per cent send messages to their friends every day.

The majority of teenagers, 93 per cent, regularly go online, with 63 per cent accessing the Internet every day.

Almost half of online adults, 47 per cent, use social networking websites, although Facebook is their preference. Among those with an online profile, 73 per cent use Facebook, 48 per cent use MySpace and 14 per cent use LinkedIn. However, 52 per cent of adults have a profile on two sites.

The survey also found that ten per cent of adults maintain a blog, a figure that has not changed since 2006.

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