Look out, boys. Today's NYT has a piece about how adolescent girls are increasingly the queens of content. A recent study by The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among teen web users, content creators are 55% female. More girls than boys maintain their own web pages (32% vs. 22%), while an even wider gender gap exists for blogging (35% of girls vs. 20% of boys). The study notes that this gap is growing fast:
Virtually all of the growth in teen blogging between 2004 and 2006 is due to the increased activity of girls. Older teen girls are still far more likely to blog when compared with older boys (38% vs. 18%), but younger girl bloggers have grown at such a fast clip that they are now outpacing even the older boys (32% of girls ages 12-14 blog vs. 18% of boys ages 15-17).
One notable anomaly: boys still outpace girls when it comes to video posting (19% vs. 10%), a disparity that doesn't appear to have anything to do with technological know-how. Rather, the experts cited by the Times offer up low-tech, gender-based explanations for the difference: While girls tend to create content that is about building relationships and expressing themselves, boys' video postings are more about showing off and "impressing others."
Hmmm. Building relationships vs. showing off. The more things change...
--Michelle Cottle