Girls Blog, Boys YouTube

According to a recent study by PEW, while overall online content creation has seen a surge since 2004, teen girls and boys in the U.S. are choosing different mediums to express themselves online. The report shows that teen girls choose to blog and post photos more than their male counterparts, while teen boys are more  likely to post videos online:

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. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it.

The report also shows that the subset of teens known as “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” represent around 28% of the entire teen population and are more likely to be older girls. Why this gender difference? Do teen girls feel more comfortable sharing their written thoughts than teen boys do? Is it “cooler” for boys to post videos (of often risky feats or pranks) than to blog or share photos? Or do these online patterns support the overall generalization that girls like to (or are expected to) communicate and socialize more, while boys like to (or are expected to) do daring things and show off? Whatever the reason for the gender difference, boys and girls alike are engaging in online interaction with one another more than ever before - nearly three-quarters of all teens online claim to have received and commented on uploaded and blog content last year, with 89% of teens who post photos reporting that they receive comments on their content “at least some of the time.”

[via ThreeMinds]