Teen Content Creators

Once again a great free report from the Pew.
I wonder how long it will be until people stop criticizing the teens. At least they put their work out there for comment and review. That’s braver than I would have been as a teen. I am sure there’s a role for libraries to collect, curate and display teen work online and beyond in their own communities. Cool.
Teen Content Creators
by Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, and Aaron Smith
Pew Internet & American Life Project
December 19, 2007
“Some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction — a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.
Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Male teens, however, do dominate one area — posting of video content online. Online boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online where others could see it.
The survey found that content creation is not just about sharing creative output; it is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. Nearly half (47%) of online teens have posted photos where others can see them, and 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least “some of the time.”
However, many teen content creators do not simply plaster their creative endeavors on the Web for anyone to view; many teens limit access to content that they share.
A subset of teens are super-communicators — teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.
Among the latest survey findings:
39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos, up from 33% in 2004.
33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2004 (32%).
28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004.
26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004.
The percentage of those ages 12-17 who said “yes” to at least one of those five content-creation activities is 64% of online teens, or 59% of all teens.
In addition to those core elements of content creation, 55% of online teens ages 12-17 have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace; 47% of online teens have uploaded photos where others can see them, though many restrict access to the photos in some way; and 14% of online teens have posted videos online. The current survey marks the first time questions about video posting and sharing were asked.
Read the full report at pewinternet.org (44 Page PDF)
Stephen