Study Finds Teens Love Facebook; Blogging and Twitter, Not So Much

(Feb. 4) -- Blogging and tweeting are like, so 2006. That's according to American teenagers, who appear to have forsaken the platforms for more newfangled "micro-blogging," like status updates.

A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that while one in 10 adults blogs, only 14 percent of teens do, down from nearly 30 percent in 2006. Surprisingly, they don't seem too partial to Twitter either: The Pew survey found that only 8 percent of teenage Internet users tweet.

The Canadian Press / AP

Nearly one-quarter of teens use social networking sites like Facebook, a study said.

That's not to say American teenagers aren't online. They're clearly addicted to the Web, along with more traditional media. A recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that 8-to-18-year-olds are spending more than seven and a half hours a day online, in front of the television, or on their cell phones. And according to Pew, 93 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds are online.

So if they're not blogging, what exactly are they doing on the Internet? Well they're socializing, of course. Nearly one in four of them are on social networking sites like Facebook, where they can communicate with peers by updating their status as frequently as they wish.

Another surprise: Pew found that 62 percent of teenagers seem to be clocking a lot of online time -- gasp -- getting "news about current events and politics." And 17 percent of them said they headed to the Internet to find information on those awkward subjects they'd probably rather not speak with an adult about, like drug use and sex.

Amanda Lenhart, one of the authors of the Pew survey, suggested that Facebook may help explain why teens are turned off by blogs. "What we think is really going on here -- why young people aren't doing blogs anymore -- is that there's been a move from MySpace, which put blogging front and center, to Facebook, which doesn't have that," she told USA Today.

Meanwhile, nearly 20 percent of adults use Twitter. Older Americans have clearly driven the Twitter trend, possibly into the ground. When it comes to blogging, "the fad stage is over," Lenhart said. In January, for example, CNN's John King used Twitter to cover the State of the Union address, exactly the kind of appropriation by the older set that could be turning off young people.

In any case, teenagers just aren't enamored with Twitter anymore. Last August, 14-year-old Georgia Marentis told The New York Times that she uses Facebook instead of Twitter because she sees it as more private. "My parents wouldn't want me to have everything going on in my life displayed for the entire world," she told The Times.