This week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released its latest study on teen online behavior. The study reported on teens as content-creators and consumers, and if you had any doubt that the media landscaping is changing, this study will help to put those doubts to rest.
The study found that 57 percent of teens online — or about half of all teenagers aged 12 to 17 — have created content for the Web. That’s approximately 12 million young people. The type of content they have created ranges from blogs to personal Web pages to sharing original works of art online.
Nineteen percent of online youth, or about 4 million young people, have created their own blog, and 38 percent of online teens (approximately 8 million people), read blogs. This represents a substantial age divide between teens and adults. According to Pew’s June 2005 Internet tracking survey, 7 percent of adults have created a blog — and 27 percent of them read blogs. As the young people who today are creating blogs become adults, we can expect the number of adult bloggers to grow.So what does that mean for those of us in traditional media? Contrary to what some believe, the issue is not simply about how many blogs you are or are not creating (and just because you post to a blogging platform does not mean you have a blog!).
So what is the issue? The issue is that the media world has gotten substantially larger. No longer is a local newspaper, television or radio station competing against another for viewers’ and readers’ attention. In today’s media world, traditional media compete against their very own users: readers and viewers have become media outlets in their own right.
Young people online are not content to simply search one “definitive” source of news and information. They search multiple sources, and, as importantly, they want to be involved in the process. If teens continue with the same habits as they become adults, it does not bode well for traditional media outlets that fail to engage their audiences in the newsgathering and reporting process. Hence, the much-talked-about citizen or community journalist.
Traditional media must decide: Do they try to compete against these new media sources, or do they somehow try to incorporate them into the existing media world? To this Chaser it is not clear what direction traditional media will pursue, or, more importantly, which one will be successful.
