BBC NEWS | Technology | Teenagers reach out via weblogs:
"Teenage boys and girls are using blogs, easily publishable online diaries, in many more similar ways than has been predicted, according to a study.
Previous studies on gender and the net have suggested girls communicate better, and more often, than boys.
But US researcher David Huffaker's study of 70 blogs contradicts this.
He found the gender split in blog use was 50-50. But worryingly, teens tended to reveal more personal details on blogs than in chatrooms and forums.
Getting personal
'Privacy is a concern, what with cyber-stalking and predation, but we think this could be something that parents or teachers could be encouraged to make them more aware of,' Mr Huffaker explained to BBC News Online.
Many teenage bloggers he studied gave out e-mail addresses, instant messenger names or links to personal homepages.....
"I am now looking at the way blogs can be used in the class, as an educational technology," Mr Huffaker said.
"The average blog post is over 2,000 words (per page), which is really interesting when you are trying to get kids to write essays."
He found evidence that some teachers had already been using blogs to highlight pupils' work to improve literacy, but also as a way for students to comment on each other's work.
Blogs have exploded in popularity amongst young people and adults in the last 18 months.
They are an increasingly common way of expressing and communicating on the net, along with e-mail, chatrooms, message boards and instant messaging.
But very few in-depth studies have examined differences in how males and females use them.
A recent white paper by Perseus has suggested there are currently 4.12 million blogs which have been created on eight of the biggest blog publishing sites on the net.
"
"Teenage boys and girls are using blogs, easily publishable online diaries, in many more similar ways than has been predicted, according to a study.
Previous studies on gender and the net have suggested girls communicate better, and more often, than boys.
But US researcher David Huffaker's study of 70 blogs contradicts this.
He found the gender split in blog use was 50-50. But worryingly, teens tended to reveal more personal details on blogs than in chatrooms and forums.
Getting personal
'Privacy is a concern, what with cyber-stalking and predation, but we think this could be something that parents or teachers could be encouraged to make them more aware of,' Mr Huffaker explained to BBC News Online.
Many teenage bloggers he studied gave out e-mail addresses, instant messenger names or links to personal homepages.....
"I am now looking at the way blogs can be used in the class, as an educational technology," Mr Huffaker said.
"The average blog post is over 2,000 words (per page), which is really interesting when you are trying to get kids to write essays."
He found evidence that some teachers had already been using blogs to highlight pupils' work to improve literacy, but also as a way for students to comment on each other's work.
Blogs have exploded in popularity amongst young people and adults in the last 18 months.
They are an increasingly common way of expressing and communicating on the net, along with e-mail, chatrooms, message boards and instant messaging.
But very few in-depth studies have examined differences in how males and females use them.
A recent white paper by Perseus has suggested there are currently 4.12 million blogs which have been created on eight of the biggest blog publishing sites on the net.
"
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