Study: blogging is passé among teens, Millennial adults

Originally published in Social Media Today

In its latest bit of research, Pew Internet examined differences by generation in online activity. As expected younger generations (e.g. teens and Millennials age 18-33) are far more likely than older generations to do things like use social networking sites (73% of teens and 83% of Millennials), use instant messaging tools, play online games and participate in virtual worlds.

One trend highlighted in the report is the fact specific online activities are becoming uniform across all age groups. Those activities include email, online banking, rating products, services or people and getting news. Here's a graphic from the report showing online news consumption habits by generation (comparing 2008 data to 2010 data).

It's interesting to see the big increase among those age 74+, particularly as the report also found that age group to be the fastest-growing in terms of use of social networking sites (4% in 2008 to 16% in 2010). Apparently Grandma is getting more and more Internet savvy.

The study also found that very few categories of online activity saw declines between 2008 and 2010, with the notable exception being blogging.

According to Pew, "Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline..." The report attributes these declines to the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, both of which allow users to do "blog like" activities such as link sharing, status updates, etc.

The Generations 2010 report provides solid insights for marketers looking to understand the online behaviors and motivations for different age demographics If things continue to progress as they are today, I'd expect to see the 'use social networking' category added to the list of activities undertaken by all age groups by the next report.