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Teens Prefer Facebook Than Twitter

A report from Pew Internet Project entitled “Social Media and Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults” revealed that teenagers preferred using Facebook over Twitter and are no longer blogging as much, as evidenced by a decline in the use of MySpace.

Report co-author Amanda Lenhart opined that the decline in blogging may have something to do with the fact that teenagers who used to patronize MySpace, which focused largely on blogging, have shifted to using Facebook.

The details and conclusions drawn from the report were based on data from phone surveys conducted in September. One of the surveys had for respondents teenagers between the ages of 12 to 17, and the other survey was conducted among adults aged 18 and above. Results show that the number of teenagers and young adults who engaged in blogging declined to half of what it used to be in 2006.

The activity whose numbers are climbing, in contrast, is that of social networking.

Lee Aase, manager for social media at Mayo Clinic, was quoted with the following statement: “Blogging has become a way to communicate with the world, about more meaningful issues, not just about communicating to friends.” We are inclined to think that for teenagers, at least at this point in their lives, Facebook offers a much more interesting way of expressing one’s self, and provides the added advantage of the ability to interact with friends.

With text-messaging also on the rise, Aase also said that both Facebook and texting are able to satisfy the chat needs of teenagers, so they do not feel particularly drawn to Twitter.