93% of U.S. teens use the Internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction. As they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media, they find it easier to share creations, tell stories, and interact with others. Recent studies show that content creation by teenagers continues to grow. 64% of online teenagers (ages 12 to 17) engage in at least one type of user-generated content, up from 57% in 2004.

  • 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 Web pages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments (basically unchanged from 32% in 2004).
  • 28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
  • 27% maintain their own personal Web page, up from 22% in 2004.
  • 26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of those 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.

However, content creation is not just about sharing creative output. It is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content. For example, 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.”

Not all teen content creators simply plaster their creative endeavors on the Web for anyone to view; many teens limit access to the content they share.

A subset of teens (28%) are super-communicators–teens who use a host of technology options to interact with friends and family, including traditional landline phones, mobile phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and e-mail.

To learn more on this subject, read the Pew/Internet report “Family, Friends & Community.”


Continue reading at the original source →