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Don't Panic, But Kids These Days Aren't Blogging (Or Are They?)
By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 21, 2011
Modified Feb 21, 2011
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By
John Del Signore
Published Feb 21, 2011
Modified Feb 21, 2011
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Ten years ago we had to explain to the olds what a blog is, and this headline in the Times implies that in another twenty years we'll have to explain to the kids what a blog was. A NIGHTMARE. In an article titled, "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter," the Times points to a Pew study from December about Milliennials' Internet use, and concludes that blogging is so over, because it's all about Facebook and Twitter. Then the article goes on to contradict the headline's premise that blogs are on the wane. Some things never change, like editors' determination to match the facts to a trendy title.
A more accurate headline might be "Google's Company 'Blogger' Sees Domestic Page Views Decline 2%." Catchy, right? To be fair, the Times does acknowledge "the possibility that the decline in blogging by the younger generation is merely a semantic issue." That's because Tumblr is proving increasingly popular, and some kids think Tumblr isn't blogging. "It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” explains one San Francisco teen. “With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”
The Times also concedes that "defining a blog is difficult, but most people think it is a Web site on which people publish periodic entries in reverse chronological order and allow readers to leave comments." The study in question found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half. But before you run out and set up a charitable trust to educate children on the vital importance of daily blogging, note the study's conclusion:
While the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, Internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.
PHEW. So kids are still lustily committing "the act formally known as blogging"—they just don't like using that old-fashioned word blog (Est. 2004), and prefer expressing their incisive opinions on the latest Family Guy episode in 140 characters or less. We can live with that.
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blogger
blogging
blogs
internet
kids
tumblr
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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