Gone Blog-Wild

Is it me out in the world blogging or are girls and women getting more attention for public journaling?  Just this last week on the front page of Living&Arts in the Boston Globe, was an article entitled Dear Blog…  Several Vermont teens were interviewed about how they use blogs to post daily ruminations.  The author reported that the dramatic increase in teen bloggers “is propelled almost entirely by girls” based on Pew Internet survey.  Blogging is not unlike the old fashion way we older girls may have confessed in our green or red leather bound diaries with gold latch and key – perhaps not totally secure against family intruders but more so than today’s online versions.  It makes me wonder how Jane Austin would take to all this uncensored scribbling.

The New York Times had an article in February, Sorry Boys, This is Our Domain, about how girls dominate the social network sphere – sans video gaming – in various activities such as blogs, graphics, photos and creating websites.  Savvy little creatures, I say.  I know my 8 year old could probably build a web page from all her online Webkins experience.

It’s really not a surprise to me all this fuss about blogging. I was surprised, however, to read in the Boston Globe article that of adult Internet users only 8% are blogging. It seems so much more prevalent to me. I’ve just joined in a conversation with other mid-life bloggers, which has extended my notion of cyberhood.  Cyberhood encompasses all of us connoisseurs of online kaffe klatches, no matter what age.  From my perspective it seems that we chicks are indeed generating a lot of interesting content – and nobody has to “hear” if they don’t want to.

As I looked up these articles which I had bookmarked on del.icio.us (just love this bookmarking feature since it helps with what I call “maternal attention deficit disorder –or maternal ADD), the New York Times popped up a box offering similar articles I might be interested in.  Of course, I had to check out an article on well-to-do women bloggers (think Leslie Stahl and other notable women), entitled Boldface in Cyberspace: It’s a Women’s Domain.  I mean really, now.  It’s pretty obvious that women will chat wherever they can.  It’s part of the biological make-up.  Women socialize for the survival of the tribe.