The LJ drama generator...

[randomness]

...seems to generate very high school drama. I thought that was kind of odd, because even though I'd been told that the stereotypical LJ user was a 17 year old girl, I don't see much of that crowd. I got to wondering if the stereotype was true.

Boy, is it ever.

http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml shows that over two-thirds of LJ users are female. All those political bloggers wondering where the women are? Yeah, they're here. Over four million of them.

Also, the top of the age curve is in the 17-18 range, so those polibloggers best stay away, 'cause lots of them are underage.

Interesting tidbits:
There are more LJ accounts to people of high school age (15-18, over a million), than there are accounts to anyone over 21 (just over 910,000). There are almost as many middle school accounts (13 and 14, nearly 159,000) as there are accounts to people over 30 (around 160,500). A lot of users are undergrad age (19-22, over 830,000), but definitely not as many as high-schoolers.

All of these numbers are for accounts in general, not active accounts. Since only about 40% of LJ accounts are active in some way, I found myself wishing for some statistics that left out all the dead accounts.

Anyway, it was interesting to find out how close to the truth the stereotype actually was.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's kind of sad, because I've seen some people dismiss LJ out of hand

Yah, I personally think those people are simply looking for reasons to dismiss LJ.

LJ is a tool. It's silly to dismiss the tool just because a bunch of teenage girls use it. And, as a matter of fact, teenage girls grow up, so in a lot of ways LJ is like those Asian mobile phone operators with all the cutesy add-ons. I don't see anyone making fun of those mobile operators just because their cell phones are pink and have antenna hang toys.

even though I personally have been using LJ for a number of years now and just haven't been exposed to any of that stuff.

Moreover, I don't think there's anything wrong with that stuff; no one compels me to read it, and if there's an infrastructure to support it that I can also use for whatever it is I want to do, so much the better.

Of course, one kind of has to already know someone with an LJ before that kind of thing can happen, so it's a case of the community creating itself and growing of its own accord, using the tools provided.

Yah, it's all about the network effects...

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't understand the "too many teen girls" complaint when it comes to LJ. It would actually take a bit of effort for me to find an LJ like that (not counting my sister *grin*). This is different from other sites that have more of a whole-community aim, like opendiary, where it's much harder to keep to yourself and your friends. (Of course, the good thing about sites like that is that it's much less awkward to "meet" total strangers, and you can meet some fantastic ones. Like Neil. Yeah, yeah, I know he's now on LJ, but that's not the point... hush...)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

This is different from other sites that have more of a whole-community aim, like opendiary, where it's much harder to keep to yourself and your friends.

Yah, I've never tried opendiary. I'm not sure what I'd say. I mean, maybe it'd be a better venue for restaurant listings, being more public and all, but I guess I never got roped into the community there the way I did here.

Also, you realize you have a very distinctive voice when you post? I can almost hear you as I read your words; you really write the way you talk.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

The main thing I like(d) about opendiary is that it can be nice to have smart, kind people to talk to that have no connection whatsoever to anyone you know in real life.

And thanks! I'm assuming that's a good thing, because I like it when other people are like that. It's less of a good thing when I start writing papers for school the way I talk, though. *grin*