Are Blogs Dying?

This week, I read a terrifying article in the New York Times. WHAT?!?! NO WAY! Those were my first reactions. I mean I spent all this time into writing so people would read my stuff and possibly one day I could write a book and now they tell me that Blogs are Dying!!!

Then, I shook off my shock and actually read the article (Yeah, I know...How old-fashioned I am to actually read a newspaper.) I was happy to find out that blogging is only really dying amongst the teens (Like were teens ever really bloggers to begin with?) Anyway, the article states that “among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs” because they prefer sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Going back to the whole teens and blogging thing. What does a 12-17 year old have to blog about? I mean they do not have a ton of hilarious and world-changing life experiences to share (which I do, so keep reading my blog!) What do they blog about? Which acne medicine is the best? The latest prom dress styles? Failing the Spanish Test (luckily not relevant to most of my students since the little angels do pretty darn good in my Spanishi class...It must be the teacher!) Maybe they blog about their trips to the mall. Think about it...Teens do not have that much to blog about, so Twitter and Facebook make way more sense since they are designed to chronicle the simple lives of teens (Yes, I said simple...You do not know a hard life until you have a mortgage, a wife, two car payments and two mis-behaving kids!). Would people really read blog posts that were written like these: 'Went to the mall today. found a cool justin bieber shirt #Justinbieber' or 'Dude, I totally blew that test. Fell asleep in the middle of it. o well off to bball practice' These little nuggets of info are suited for Twitter and Facebook, not a blog.

Anyway, teens aren't ready to blog because they have not fully developed and perfected the fine art of satire. They cannot make fun of celebrities or politicians at their tender age. Add the fact that everything they blog would be visible to everyone, including their parents (at least they can not add their parents and set privacy settings, etc. on facebook), and teens should back off of blogging until they hit college. That is when the fun and the blogging should begin!