It's Official

Today there was an article by Mark Hatchman that summarized the latest Pew Research report on the web. It confirmed what I have suspected for a long time: blogs are the domain of old farts and fartettes. OK, OK, Mr Hatchman didn't refer to old farts and fartettes, nor does the original report, but they may as well have.

The report was a result of the Pew Research Center's ongoing Internet & American Life Project effort. The key finding relevant to blogging was that the number of teens that said they blogged dropped from 28% in 2006 to 14% in 2009. Contrast that with the constant 10% of adults that say they maintain a blog. The real kiss of death amidst teens is that they consider blogging to be un-cool. 

Other interesting numbers pointed out that teens prefer myspace while adults tend towards facebook. No real surprise there. One glimmer of hope - teens don't tweet. Less than 8% of teens use Twitter compared to 19% of adults. Twitter was also rated an un-cool amidst teens. 

So looks like the old farts and fartettes have it - we can blog and tweet to our hearts desire - the kids won't be reading so we can say anything we want about them. {*grin*} 

One factoid that we all are probably already aware of is that there was a decline of roughly 5% in the number of homes with internet/broadband in 2009. Pew made no explanation, but I suspect the economy. For interesting reading, take a look at the full report from Pew Research.