I recall the popularization of a previous Pew study on the Internet use by women and men, so I'm now excitedly awaiting an equal wave of popularization of this finding:
Another strike against the tendency to see cultural predilections of the moment as direct reflections of underlying genetically-determined features of human nature. For years, everything related to computers has been a predominantly male domain. But the New York Times reports on a dramatic shift: these days, young girls are much more likely to be creating original Web content than young boys.
Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).
Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building 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). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.
Guess what? If the study gets popularized it will be on that video blogging difference or on something about how girls want to touch others. Call me an old cynical goddess, but that's how it goes.
But the news is actually good for those who feared that girls and women would be left behind on the net.