Teenagers and young adults are increasingly rejecting blogging, but interest in reading
online news has not waned, according to new research from the US.
Studies by the Pew research centre highlight that 62 per cent of teens like to use the web for news and political information, with consumption going up to 77 per cent during special events like a general election.
With regard to adults, the centre's analysis indicates that 72 per cent get their news online - a proportion that's remained fairly constant since 2002.
The researchers suggest that youngsters are exchanging "macro-blogging" for microblogging with status updates, since blogging rates have dropped among teenagers and young adults alike from 2006 onwards.
Overall, they point to the fact that access to the internet is changing in general, with portable devices like mobile phones and game consoles growing increasingly important.
"Mobile access to the internet is on the rise, and the reading of news on the platform is likely to follow this development," state the Pew team. "Offerings such as the New York Times's Times People or the Huffington Post's deep integration of Facebook are likely to become more common to encourage young people to share articles and debate with their friends."
The comments tally with last week's revelation that Facebook could well be on the road to becoming the
number one source for online news, especially in the wake of the social networking site's latest "news list" aggregation feature which is comparable to the RSS feed.
