At Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, DeadJournal, Blurty, etc., minute details of teenagers’ lives are available to anybody, anytime. We’ve heard it before, but this article from The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has some arresting new numbers and insights. Internet market researchers Perseus Development projects that there will be more than 10 million blogs by the end of this year, 52% of them by people aged 10 to 19, 40% by 20-somethings. But this is what parents need to know: “In his study of teen blogs, researcher David Huffaker of Georgetown University found that 20% of teens posted their full names, 67% listed their ages, 59% revealed their locations, and 61% divulged some sort of contact information.” Bloggers’ full names can be Googled by future college admissions decisionmakers and employers, not to mention people with ill intentions. Many kids are using photo blogs as well, such as MySpace.com, posting pictures of themselves in various states of dress (for more, see Photoblogs.org, Fotolog.net, and Forbes.com’s Best Photo Blogs). BTW, you probably already know this, but one way to find out if your child is using his or her full name on the Web is to search for that full name at a few search engines.
In other teen-blogging coverage at Net Family News: “Daughter’s blog, mom’s dilemma”; “Kid Web developers”; “Teens’ blog life”; “Marketing to kids with blogs”; and “Parents getting blogged” (think about it: a parent’s prospective employer googles her and finds a disgruntled child’s family tell-all).
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