• by Shankar Gupta , November 3, 2005

Fifty-seven percent of online U.S. teens--or roughly 12 million--now create or share online content, including blogs, Web pages, and photos, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The study, "Teen Content Creators and Consumers," based on surveys of 1,100 U.S. youngsters ages 12 to 17, found that 33 percent of online teens share artwork, photos, stories, and video online; 32 percent have created Web sites for themselves or others; and 22 percent keep a personal Web page. Additionally, 19 percent report keeping their own blog or online journal; by contrast, a Pew study in 2004 found that just 7 percent of adult online users had created blogs.

Kevin Krim, manager of the blog site Livejournal--where 75 percent of the site's four million users are in the 14-24 age group--said that teens are especially drawn to blogging because they view it as a way to shape identity. "They're drawn to it because the teenage experience, if I were to make a generalization, is about creating an identity," he said. "These kids spend their time online anyway, so creating an online identity of their own is a huge deal for them. And we give them the tools to do that."

Krim added that advertisers have taken notice of teen-created content sites as a medium for reaching the teen market. He said that although Livejournal now is ad-free, advertisers have approached him about sponsoring pages. "In our experience, there's been interest--yes," he said. "I think there's been that interesting question of, in particular, are brand advertisers comfortable with seeing their brands near community-created content, and I suspect that the marketers will start to see that community-created content is just a fact of online life."

The study also found that teens are avid online content-consumers. More than half--51 percent--of online teens say they download music files from the Internet, compared to only 18 percent of online adults, and 31 percent download video files to their computers--more than double the 14 percent of online adults who do so. According to the report, 75 percent of teens agree that getting free music from the Internet via downloads and fire sharing is "easy to do," and "it's unrealistic to expect people not to do it."