Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Girl Bloggers Outnumber Boy Bloggers

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.

The one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.
via NY Times

2 comments:

Audacious Epigone said...

Interesting. I wonder how the number of visitors to blogs differ between boys and girls at that age. In the 'professional' blogosphere, white men dominate. Does this suggest the trend will change in the future? I suspect it might in terms of the raw numbers of blogs out there, but doubtful it will change much in terms of 'top blogs'.

Fat Knowledge said...

AE,

Good question on number of visitors. I have no idea.

I followed you link, but wasn't able to find any numbers and all the links were from 2005. But, I did glance at the top 100 blog list at Technorati and it does look like most are male.

It seems though that it is driven by the fact that the top blogs are technology related. As blogs become more popular, I figure they will end up looking more like the magazine rack at the bookstore, topic wise. I would think that the male/female breakdown of top bloggers would be similar to that of top reporters/writers/journalists in the future. But, I actually don't know the breakdown of those professions off hand.

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.