Green Tea Ice Cream

The New York Times reports that more female teenagers than boys are creating content on the Net. The study (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).

Not such a shock in many ways. Most of the people who read my parenting blog are women and of the dad’s blogs I read, more of the commenters are women. In the tech blogs, though, a cursory and highly unscientific perusal suggests the reverse. And the more interesting findings reported by the Times note that

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

So women (appallingly huge generalisation alert) have more of a tendency to embrace technology as a human, meaningful, creative act from an earlier age than men - but something about the IT industry as a whole reverses that. No real information as to the demographics - the interest is as much the spin put on it by the Times and others in many ways.

By the way, the Pew Internet and American Life Project is a fascinating timesink in its own right - did you know that 64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes?