Blogging loses its hold on the young

Could it be that blogs have become online fodder for the—gasp!—more mature reader?

A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn’t mean blogging is going away. Rather, it’s gone the way of the telephone and e-mail—still useful, just not sexy.

“Remember when ‘You’ve got mail!’ used to produce a moment of enthusiasm and not dread asks Danah Boyd, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkinan Center for Internet and Society. Now when it comes to blogs, she says.

The people focus on using them for what they’re good for and turning to other channels for more exciting things.”

Those channels might include anything from social networking sites to others that feature games or video.

The study, released last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half ‘in that age group say they comment on friends’ blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.

Pew found a similar drop in blogging among 18- to 29-year-old. Overall, Pew estimates that roughly one in 10 online adults maintain a blog—a number that has remained consistent since 2005, when blogs became a more mainstream activity In the US, that would mean there are more than 30 million adults who blog.

‘That’s a pretty remarkable thing to have gone from zero to 30 million in the last 10 years,” says David Sifry, founder of blog search site Technorati. But according to the data, that population is aging.

The Pew study found, for instance, that the percentage of Internet users age 30 and older who maintain a blog increased from 7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009.

Pews over-18 data, collected ‘in the last half of last year, were based on interviews with 2,253 adults and have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. The under-18 data came from phone interviews with 800 12- to 17-year-old and their parents. The margin of error for that data was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.