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Think that amongst Internet users boys rule? Think again. I stumbled across an interesting New York Times Fashion and Style article entitled Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain which takes the findings of a Pew Internet in American Life study published a few months back, and tried to explain what they really mean. The story suggests there is a significant gender imbalance between boys and girls.

 

The article states that with the exception of producing video, “the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive girls (12 to 17.)”

 

Girls are significantly more productive as web content developers, with 35% of girls creating and maintaining blogs and 32% having their own web site, compared to only 20% of boys with blogs and 22% with web pages, and that the reason is that most boys don’t have the patience.

 

According to the Pew study, girls also are more likely to build or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Only in the area of posting videos did boys excel as they are nearly twice as likely to post video files.

 

Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology but 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.

 

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said. This is significant according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

 

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

 

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models.

 

Figuring out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective desire to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations. What’s happening now is according to one expert the feminization of the Internet.

The entire New York Times Fashion and Style article can be found at this link.