Teen 'content creators'

Most of us knew teenagers love to communicate online, but we now know more about their avid interest in creating content there, thanks to a just-released survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew found that "fully half" of all US 12-to-17-year-olds, about 12 million (and 57% of those who use the Net) "have created a blog or Web page, posted original artwork, photography, stories, or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations."

* 19% of online teens keep a blog and 38% (or 8 million) read them (as opposed to 7% and 27% of adults, respectively)
* Older girls (15-17) "lead the blogging activity among teens"; 25% of online girls keep blogs, as opposed to 15% of boys.
* 51% of online teens say they're downloading music files, and 31% video files.
* 75% of teen downloaders think that getting free music is easy, and it's
unrealistic to expect people not to do it.
* Teens are just as likely to have paid for music online as they are to have
tried P2P (file-sharing) services like BitTorrent or eDonkey.

USATODAY this week zoomed in on just the blogging/journaling part of teen content creation, with "Teens wear their hearts on their blog." USATODAY cites market research firm Intelliseek numbers as saying at least 8 million teens blog (compared to Pew's 4 million).