Has blogging changed? A study was released today showing that young people have been moving away from blogging in droves and have settled largely in social networks (particularly facebook). It would seem that the focus is on somewhat-controlled circles of friends instead of the infinite range of the web or the twitterverse.
I find that interesting, considering it is oversharing that seems to be such a concern when it comes to kids use of technology. "Sexting", or sending sexually explicit text and multimedia messages is getting a lot of attention in the media as it seems to be getting plenty of young people into trouble. Perhaps the expectation of privacy with "sexting" does not apply to the open models of blogging and twitter (at least for those who don't protect their tweets). Does this show a level of technological savvy or naïveté? I'd venture that it may represent some level of self-control but is nonetheless a naive approach considering anything online is likely to enter the public sphere. This has been proven time and again by political candidates whose careers end before they begin due to the publicizing of ostensibly private information. Naive though it may be, awareness of privacy issues is a good place from which to start when developing media and technology-savvy youth.
All this leads back to the blog that you are reading. Why do I bother? That's not something that I have an immediate answer to. It may have been as much of a chance to put on a particular public face as it was to have an outlet for my thoughts. I continue to work to find the time and content that is best suited to this medium and not one of the other sharing tools that I use to represent me in the digital sphere. I guess as long as you've got something to read, I've got something to stay and for me, at least, there is still a place for a blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment