about BLOGs...

Blogs, or weblogs are online diaries which can either be read by a select audience or open to the internet community at large. A blog is defined as a website with dated entries, usually by a single author, and is often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site's editor visits on a regular basis.

Why are blogs so popular?

• Unlike a personal diary, blogs allow youth to share about events in their lives with their closest friends as well as those overseas
• Some youths choose to write about unpleasant encounters involving their friends online so that they would not have to personally confront the situation
• Yet others choose to write blogs so that their parents would not have as easy an access as if they had written a physical diary

Benefits of Blogging

• It encourages the diversity of thought - ideas are evaluated based on merit, not on source of origin
• Filtering - ideas with merit are filtered through various blogs. Significant thoughts or posts receive multiple links
• Multiple perspectives - one-sided perspective of newspapers are replaced by pssionate debates exploring virtually every facet of an idea or concept
• Barrier elimination - society is about barriers - actual or unspoken. Blogging allows elites to communicate with people across barriers
• Free flow - any idea can be expressed and accessed by anyone. The process of blogging separates good ideas from poor ideas. The process itself has built-in quality control
• Real time - discussions and interactions happen right now
• Links and connections - the complexity of an information-heavy society requires specialisation. Yet specialisation is futile if a process is not created to link specialities. Blogging strings together disparate fields of interest and thought.
• Blogs can be used in the education field to help students learn in a medium they are comfortable with.

Negative effects of Blogging

• Blogging contributes to internet addiction, especially when bloggers spend a significant part of their walking hours either updating their blogs or reading other people's blogs
• Social/physical isolation - some bloggers communicate about their life experiences only through their blogs and in the process neglect healthy social interactions with others
• Offensive remarks could be propagated to generate hate among the masses
• Personal details of bloggers facilitate internet crime

Source: The Offline Guide for the Online Generation