Social-media gender gap: Research

Females increasingly rule the social Web, research by the people behind reputation lookup site RapLeaf.com found. According to a blog post by its CEO, "young women are much more active on these sites then young men. And for people above 30, men - especially married men - aren’t even joining social networks. With the notable exception of LinkedIn.com usage and VCs in the Bay Area friending everyone on Facebook, married men are not hanging out on social networks. Married women, however, are joining social networks in droves. In fact, women between the ages 35-50 are the fastest growing segment on social networks, especially on MySpace." They're not just socializing, though, they're also producing media (text, graphics, photos, etc.) and decorating profiles and pages. It's not that young men don't spend every bit as much time in front of a computer - sometimes more - but young men, he says, spend those hours more in "videogames such as World of Warcraft, first-person action games," and offshore poker sites, where they can actually win and lose money. As for seeking out the opposite sex: "Now young men understand that they can’t spend ALL their time playing video games (though some do) as they still need to interact with the opposite sex. Sex is one of the strongest drivers of online usage and many men see social networks as a gateway to potentially filling that desire. Men, in general, tend to look at things more transactionally than women. Once men get married, they see increasingly less value in being on a social network." The Pew/Internet project released similar findings last December (see "Boys & girls on Web 2.0" and "Teens rule the Web").

Boys & girls on Web 2.0

A thoughtful New York Times piece looks at the social Web's young innovators and reports that "the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls," referring to the Pew/Internet findings that they're the biggest creators of Web graphics, blogs, photos, profile pages, and sites (35% of girls 12-17 have blogs vs. 20% of boys; 32% of girls have Web pages vs. 22% of boys; and 70% of girls 15-17 have social-site profiles vs. 57% of boys 15-17). It's funny that the Times and (everybody else, seemingly) goes on to cite with surprise statistics about the *dearth* of girls in computer science programs - as if all this creativity on their part is somehow about computers and technology! "It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion." Well, of course. Harvard Law School's Berkman Center seems to understand that creativity on the Net is no more about technology than it is offline: "The result of [its] focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality." As for boys, here's an interesting observation: "THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said." Remember, that's a quote.