In 2005, USA Today boasted that blogs are: “the new way teens interact.” However, in the meantime teens seem to have lost their enthusiasm for blogging. Recent results from a Pew Research Center study show that the number of 12-17 year olds that blog, has decreased by half since 2006. They’ve traded writing longer, more regular portions of text, for short and quick messaging formats, which allow for better access on their mobile devices.

No surprise that the growing popularity of Facebook and the rise of micro blogging with Twitter has had some major impact on these statistics. Blogging means creating longer entries, which in effect means that you have to invest a considerable amount of time. This is one reason why teenagers, who are known to be a bit lazy, are less interested in blogs. Twitter, however is not capitalizing on this, as many social media experts believed it would.

Although many teens are gravitating toward social networks and microblogs in their journey away from blogs, they’re not embracing Twitter. The Pew Research Center study confirmed that Twitter was a “last resort” for the 12-17 demographic, which uses all other social platforms, including Facebook and MySpace, more frequently.

By Nielsen’s estimates, Twitter’s teen demographic represents a paltry 5% of their total users. One of the major reasons teens are underrepresented on Twitter is the limited sharing capacity, which makes it seem quaint versus say, Facebook. One common reaction from teens is, “so where do I put my favorite song on here?” Additionally, teen opinion indicates that such a service already exists - text messaging, which already fulfills the micro-communications they want. Twitter is also not rich in features, leaving many teens to ask “is that it?” when experiencing it for the first time. Moreover, Twitter is already populated by an older audience, which makes it not cool by association.

Status updates, or what I call “attention bursts,” have become the choice online activity for teens. So as teen’s blogging behavior and habits change, I’ll pick up the slack, hit submit on this memo and keep blogging.