Blogging’s getting old

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

A study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief and mobile. Tech analysts say it doesn’t mean that blogging is disappearing. Rather, it has 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?” asked Danah Boyd, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Now when it comes to blogs, she said, “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 videos.

The study, released last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet users ages 12 to 17 now say they blog, compared with more than a quarter who did so in 2006. 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-olds.

Pew estimates that one-tenth of online adults overall maintain blogs — a number that has remained consistent since 2005, when blogging became a more mainstream activity. In the U.S., that would add up to 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,” said David Sifry, founder of blog search site Technorati.

But that population is aging, data show.

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

Pew’s data for people 18 and older, collected in the last half of 2009, were based on interviews with 2,253 adults and have a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points. The data for people younger than 18 came from phone interviews with 800 12- to 17-year-olds and their parents. The margin of error for that data was 3.8 percentage points.

So why are young people less interested in blogging?

The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update. That has “kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging,” said Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study.

More young people also are accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

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