Blogging trend tails off among US teens

Results showed that only 14 percent of teenagers said they blogged in 2009, a sharp drop from 28 percent in 2006. In addition, the number of teens who left comments on blogs in online social networking sites dropped to 52 percent from 76 percent in 2006.

According to the authors of the study, the decline in blogging interests may be due to youths switching from macro-blogging to micro-blogging with status updates, which are shown in real time.

Among the adults, many are still into blogs as one in ten adults are reported to keep online journals or blogs and this ratio has been constant since 2005. However, among young adults aged 18 to 29, blogging dropped to 15 percent in 2009 compared to 24 percent in 2007.

On the other hand, people age 30 and above who blogged increased from 7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009.

Many teenagers are on social networking sites, as 73 percent claimed to belong to online communities. However, teenagers said they were reducing sending messages to their friends via social networks. MySpace attracted a younger crowd while Facebook seemed to appeal to the older crowd, according to Pew.

Teenagers were also found to be major users of almost all online applications except for microblogging service Twitter.

Only eight percent of Internet users ages 12 to 17 said they used Twitter, but nearly two thirds used mobile phone text messages to communicate.

Young adults were the heaviest Twitter users, with a third of people ages 18 to 29 posting or reading "tweets," according to Pew.

In conclusion, teenagers and young adults show different interests in various channels of communication via the internet. This trend might change year after year.