Notorious for small sample sizes, but interesting none the less, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has released another study. This one is about teens and online content creation/sharing. Based on 1,100 families, findings included:

• Some 57% of online teens create content for the internet. That amounts to half of all teens ages 12-17, or about 12 million youth. These Content Creators report having done one or more of the following activities: create a blog; create or work on a personal webpage;
  create or work on a webpage for school, a friend, or an organization; share original content such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos online; or remix content found online into a new creation.
• 19% of online youth ages 12-17 have created their own blog. That is approximately four million people.
• 38% of all online teens, or about 8 million young people, say they read blogs.
• 7% of adult internet users say they have created their own blog and 27% of online adults say they read blogs. (Note: Data for adult blog readers comes from the May- June 2005 Pew Internet Project Tracking Survey.)

Say what you will about what most teenagers use their blogs for, but what this study says to me is this: blogs are going to only get bigger in the very near future. Young adults will increasingly demand communication that is open, frequent and two-way. What percentage of these young people will grow to read and write blogs about serious subjects as a primary means of communicating with the world around them? What’s your strategy for maximizing relevance?

Thanks to Ruby Sinreich for pointing to this Pew study.

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