Blogher - Teens & Blogging
| Published on 31 Jul 2005 at 10:48 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized. |
Today is BlogHer Con ‘05: Track BlogHer Live Now and join our chat!!
Session: A Room of Your Own - “Teens & Blogging: Finding their voices, led by the YPulse bloggers”
Not so live blogged because connectivity was tough to come by.
Moderator: Anastasia of YPulse
Facts:
- 90% of all bloggers are between 13 and 29 years old
- Blogging provides a place to socialize with friends
- Blogs are used for: Diaries, posting innermost personal thoughts, teen angst, teen poems
- Specific topics - christian, goth, wiccan, vegan, politics
- A huge part of the blogging landscape is being filled by teens
- Blogging is part of the socialization process
- Blogging is a positive thing to teenagers, helps them find themselves and connects them to other people and places
- Pew Study about teens - 9 out of 10 are online
- 51% go online everyday
Panelists:
Katie - Digital Graffitti - anything teens do artwise
Julie - 14 - Digital Graffitti on Ypulse - Trend Alerts on Fridays
Megan - 17 - doesn’t blog yet
Dana Boyd - studies teen culture and identity production, looking at disruptive behaviour (pro ana, pro mia, pro cutting)
“How much is too much to put online?” - older generations used to keep diaries, should teens be doing something as public as a blog for their diaries?
Megan -” take into account that a blog is relatively public, you can’t put all your feelings onto a blog but you should still have a good relationship with your parents so they don’t read your blog”
Katie - “Teens need to take the responsibility for putting themselves out there. Everything you write can be read.”
Dana - “Most teens are aware that their blogs can be read, most teens are responsible enough not to reveal details”
“How many parents are aware their teens blog?”
Anastasia - “depends upon their relationship with their parents. Blogging can create Parental Free zones.”
News makes stories about the risks of the internet and blogging more spectacular than it really is
Megan has a friend that Anastasia interviewed who has a blog that her mother knows about. Teens who are really struggling with issues may use a public/private forum.
When asked “Do your parents know you blog,” Megan replied, “Do your parents know you blog? Teens are people too.”
Katie-”it’s important to know how you feel about yourself, pay attention to what’s inside as well as the outside, like malicious comments”
Anastatsia - [it can be easy to create] “Cyber Drama”
New ways for teens to do what has happened to all teens
Most people know blogging is public, you still expect only certain people to pay attention. We put on certain voices to attract those who are like us. To what degree do we expect only people we want to attract?
“Is there an eqauivalent inbetween space for blogging?” - Certain pages can be passworded.
There’s some motivation to put it in the public space - validation
There are a lot of teens that put it all out there, but like adults, just don’t think about it.
“How does living your life publicly on the internet affect commerce and jobs. Do I want an interviewer 10 years from now reading your blog?”
It’s like getting a tattoo, which is permanent and can become a regrettable decision
“It depends upon what kind of job you’re looking for” - Megan
“I think people and teens just need to be conscious and realize” - Dana
“[It’s like] Reading my diary from 2nd grade, you wouldn’t take it to an interview” - Katie
[It depends upon] who’s going to be interviewing you?
Write the truth now and 10 years from now learn to write .htaccess files, Archive it, or tell people “I made it up.”
Don’t encourage teens to hide the truth.
Teens don’t usually become friends with people they haven’t met. It is dangerous. Hype about predators. There hasn’t been one case where people have tracked down a teen from putting details on their blog.
Pro ana, pro mia, pro cutting web logs. Online communities to support distrupting behaviour. Girls 11-19, teens who visit these sites are more likely to be hospitalized, many use a new purging technique they learned from these sites. Teens often make threats on their blogs. The Red Lake teen who killed his classmates was making threats on his blog and doing incredible graphic violent animations.
LiveJournal contacts psychological organizations to support teens who blog about their issues
“If people have access to community networks, does that make their identity stronger?”
Not just about physical bodies, digitizing just magnifies the problems
“Digital is not superficial” - Dana
Focus should be on education. [An issue] gets magnified, all of a sudden there’s 50 to 100 kids talking about not wanting to be helped (on the disruptive behaviour blogs)
Reform the media and their image of teen girls
All the people in eating disorder organizations watch internet groups to learn how to help. “[It’s like] Real time anthropology.”
“What’s cool?”
Stay in touch with friends, explore themselves, be whoever they want, try different things, find their own interests on line
Shoes, water privatization, the new MTV show - you can talk about anything and everything because there’s people you can find to talk about it. It’s instantaneous.
Depends upon the teens
Internet cliques
Join the networks because all your friends are on it.
Technorati Tags:
blogher
bloghercon