Yesterday, (Sunday October 3) as I was ready to do my finance homework at the UGLI, I found a newspaper lying around in the floor. It was THE DETROIT NEWS AND FREE PRESS and in the front cover there was a headline "Teens spill deep secrets in Weblogs." Ofcourse I read the article and now I'm blogging about it.
The article was published on Sunday, September 26, 2004 and was mainly about the high school students blogging and about the unintended consequences. Mostly, American teens today opt to write online journals rather than writing secrets into a "flowery, lined pages of a lock-and-key diary." Teens say that blogging is fun, "a way to get your frustrations out," "a way to combat boredom and a way to connect with friends and make new ones."
The article also illustrates a mixed review from adults, mainly parents and teachers, about teenagers blogging. Yong Zhao, a professor of educational techonology at Michigan State says that weblogs and online diaries are like forums where students can express themselves and try out new things. He also adds that weblogs are accepted by teenagers because they want to be socially accepted and that students can express their true personal feelings without them being embarrassed.
On the other side of the coin, parents and teachers balk at the grammar and writing they see on students' weblogs. Most of the students use bad grammar and poor spelling and little if not any punctuations which can be seen below.
Hine's Weblog:
"lauren jenny eryn and jenys lil sista made me get well cards. that was so
nice of u guys. thanks "
Parents are also concerned that kids (mostly high school students) may not understand the negative consequences of writing about sex lives, families, drug use and relationships on their weblogs. Researchers believe that people online do not seem to grasp that there are real physical consequences no matter how much they think its not real because they feel the audience is not close to them.
Although there is a risk that predators and pedophiles can track children down reading their weblogs, experts discount the risk because they believe that close friends and acquaintances are the ones mostly reading them.
High school students will blog and keep blogging. Its certainly more fun that school and its a open forum where you can write about anything and everything. I believe parents or teachers monitoring students blogs are just too much work and too much of an hassle. Thus, it would be better, if students could learn how to blog, what to blog and how to protect themselves from unintended consequences. I believe the role of parents and teachers are just to trust their children and let them be themselves and express themselves on the web.
------------------------------------------------------------------
One fact I found interesting:
People who blog:
AGE Blogs created by age
10-12 55,500
13-19 2,120,000
20-29 1,630,000
30-39 241,000
40-49 41,700
50-59 18,500
60-69 13,900
.....................................................
TOTAL 4,120,600