Kids + Blogs = OK

Posted on July 28, 2005

There are lots of articles appearing in newspapers about how blogs and the Internet are putting kids at risk. The biggest argument is that teens will reveal too much information about themselves in blogs making it easy for a predator to find them. A new article from the Christian Science Monitor by Laura Matthews may make concerned parents breathe a little easier. Laura Matthews, a freelancer and single mother, says that parents need to be vigilant about their kids Internet use and that the educational benefits kids gain from being online is worth the time investment. She also explains that blogging is writing and that means your avid young blogger could be a future Pulitzer winner.

My daughter discovered online journals, or "blogs," when she was 16. After a lot of negotiating, she was allowed to start her blog on www.xanga.com. Her "xanga" had to be accessible by me. She couldn't post her real name, photos of herself, or her location, and I encouraged her to warn her friends not to either. But in keeping an eye on her xanga, I also had access to her friends' xangas. Surprise - this opened me up to a whole new world of insight into today's teenager. These kids can write.
To keep a blog going, you have to have the discipline to write daily. This puts today's young bloggers on the fast track to future Pulitzers. To keep your friends coming back, you have to be interesting, funny, intelligent, relevant. These kids are all that and more. Once I got past the immature spelling and punctuation (along with usual teen slang and vulgarity), I was treated to some of the best poetry I've ever read. All of their blogs together are a veritable anthropological study of high school life. One senior I know has, in four years, transformed from what seemed like functional illiteracy - incomplete sentences, poor spelling - into a blossoming philosopher headed for a major university.

Laura Matthews also includes a handy chart in the article that she uses in her household to determine what kids can and can't do online depending on their age.