American teenagers today are utilising the interactive capabilities of the Internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57 per cent of teens who use the Internet can be considered content creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations, says a new report by Pew Internet & American Life Project.
About 21 million or 87 per cent of those in the 12-17 age bracket use the Internet, according to a just-released survey 'Teen Content Creators and Consumers'. The results highlight that this is a generation comfortable with content-creating technology. Teens are eager to share their thoughts, experiences, and creations with the wider Internet population, the survey report said.
Among some of the key findings were:
- 33 per cent of online teens share their own creative content online, such as artwork, photos, stories or videos.
- 32 per cent say that they have created or worked on webpages or blogs for others, including groups they belong to, friends or school assignments.
- 22 per cent report keeping their own personal webpage.
- 19 per cent of online teens keep a blog, and 38 per cent of online teens read blogs.
- 19 per cent of Internet-using teens say they remix content they find online into their own artistic creations.
Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent Internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey.
"For American teens, blogs are about self-expression, building relationships, and carving out a presence online," said Amanda Lenhart, co-author of the report, and senior research specialist at the project. "Most young people aren't spending their time at the highly-trafficked A-list blogs. They're reading and creating the 'long-tail' of blogs � personal sites read by networks of friends and family."
The survey found that 19 per cent of online youth ages 12-17 have created their own blog. That is approximately four million people. In fact, 38 per cent of all online teens, or about 8 million young people, say they read blogs. Only 7 per cent of adult Internet users say they have created their own blog and 27 per cent of online adults say they read blogs.
Older girls ages 15-17 are the most likely to blog; 25 per cent of online girls in this age group keep a blog, compared to 15 per cent of older boys who are online. About 18 per cent of younger teens of both sexes blog. Teens who go online frequently are more than twice as likely to blog; 27 per cent of daily users have their own blog, compared to 11 per cent of those who go online several times a week, and 10 per cent of those who go online less often.
Among teens who read blogs there are significant demographic differences from the overall online teen population. Teens from households with higher incomes ($50,000 and up) and higher levels of parental education are more likely to read blogs than teens from low socioeconomic status homes. About 42 per cent of teens in households earning more than $50,000 annually report reading the blogs of others, compared to less than a third (30 per cent) of teens from lower income households.
Teens from tech-savvy and highly wired homes are also more likely to read blogs than their less wired compatriots. More than two in five (42 per cent) teens with long-wired parents � those parents who have been online for six or more years � read blogs, in contrast to the one-quarter (25 per cent) of teens with parents who have been online for less than four years. Broadband Internet access also appears to be related to blog reading � 46 per cent of online teens with broadband at home read the blogs of others, while only 31 per cent of dial-up users say the same.
Girls are more likely than boys of similar ages to read the blogs of others. More than half (53 per cent) of girls ages 15 to 17 read blogs, compared to 34 per cent of boys in that age group. Fewer young teens read blogs compared to their older counterparts overall, with 31 per cent of all 12- to 14-year-olds reporting blog reading, compared to 43 per cent of teens ages 15 to 17.
Daily Internet users are the most likely to read blogs, followed by those online several times a week. Infrequent Internet users are the least likely to report ever having read a blog. Half of daily users report blog reading, while 30 per cent of teens who go online several times a week read blogs, compared with just 11 per cent of infrequent teen users. Teens who report that they most often go online from home are also more likely to read blogs than those who favour other Internet access locations. While 43 per cent of these home users read blogs, 29 per cent of teens who go online most often from school say that they read them.
These findings are based on a November 2004 survey of 1,100 youth ages 12 to 17 and their parents. The margin of error for responses based on the sample of teens or parents is � 3 percentage points at a 95 per cent confidence level.
Teens continue to actively download music and video from the Internet and have used multiple sources to get their files. Half of online teens (51 per cent) report downloading music, compared to just 18 per cent of adults who report similar behaviour. Nearly one third (31 per cent) of teens report downloading video files so that they can watch them any time they want.
Teens who get music files online believe it is unrealistic to expect people to self-regulate and avoid free downloading and file-sharing altogether. Out of the 622 teens in the survey who said they have tried music downloading, 75 per cent agreed with the statement that "music downloading and file-sharing is so easy to do, it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it." Just 23 per cent disagreed with this statement.
"Today's online teens have grown up amidst the chaos of the digital copyright debate, and it shows," said Mary Madden, a research specialist at the project and co-author of the report. "At a time when social norms around digital content don't always appear to conform with the letter of the law, many teens are aware of the restrictions on copyrighted material, but believe it's still permissible to share some content for free."
About half of them think free downloading and file-sharing copyrighted content without permission is generally wrong, yet roughly the same number say they don't care about the copyright on the music files that they download.
