"While blogging among adults as a whole has remained steady, the prevalence of blogging within specific age groups has changed dramatically in recent years. Specifically, a sharp decline in blogging by young adults has been tempered by a corresponding increase in blogging among older adults".
The number of young people keeping blogs has fallen 14% since 2006, and the number of twentysomethings blogging has fallen 9%. Only the over-30s are writing more online.
Nicolas Carr's reaction has given me a number of excellent ideas for my future blogging: "When I blog these days, I feel like I should be sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a highly absorptive undergarment, and writing posts debunking some overhyped new bunion treatment (iPads?)".
It also seems that 'blogger' has become a term of abuse. A quick glance over Urban Dictionary (as good a barometer of young-people attitudes as any other) isn't encouraging. Among accurate, objective definitions of 'blogger' are some real gems. My favourites:
"Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives. Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger's website to set the lesser blogger's ego into orbit. "
"An internet diary writer. Or more accurately, a whinging, wining, insecure, sympathy-craving, self-indulgent, self-important, over-privileged 'feeling: meh' scum of the internet/universe."
"A person with a laptop, an ax to grind, and their virginity [Stephen Colbert]".
As someone who's been following (mostly left-wing) political blogs religiously for several years now, I literally had no idea. I thought this blog would make me fairly in-touch with modern yoof culture; now, like my defiant lack of a Facebook profile, it will have to define me as an angry old man in a young-person's body. Lovely.
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