Blogging: Finding Identity & the Courage to Share

Teens use communication channels on the internet to broaden their circle of friends to include both real and virtual friends. In creating blogs, they share in writing thoughts about themselves, as well as comments about others, and the world around them. Beyond strictly blogging, the page design and links they include are also indirect expressions of the self (Papacharissi 2002). This points to a digital opportunity - beyond the technical/ design skills being learned, teens are learning to express abstract ideas (in this case the self) through visual appearance, design, and affiliations.

While it seems that most teens share blogs with their real-world friends, many teens do use the global potential of the internet to expand their social network. In Bortree’s research, one girl told of how she reads "blogs of teenagers who live in other parts of the world that she wished to visit." This points to some truth behind the Internet utopian ideal of “global connectedness” - not only are Digital Natives more fluent, connected, and share differing ideas of privacy, piracy, etc, than Digital Immigrants, but they are also from the outset globally connected with others through their digital escapades.

Mckenna et al (2002) found that sharing the 'true' self on-line can create close relationships.

In "Presentation of Self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs" (2005) Denise S. Bortree found that blogging was used by teen girls as safe space for inter-personal communication. She highlights four aspects of inter-personal communication found in blogs:

1) Sharing intimate thoughts, frustrations, disappointments, sometimes despair

2) Revealing personal struggles and family interactions

3) Expressing intimacy and building affection between the group of blogger girls

4) Linking to other blogs to express a sense of closeness to others and belonging to the group

In fact, Bortree found that girls were more willing to share some things in a blog than through any other communication channel, even in person. One girl said that her friends would 'probably not discuss our problems as much' if they didn't blog. Consider another girl’s statement:

"A lot of times, people write things in their blogs because they don't have the esteem or courage to talk about it, but by writing it in their blog, they are hoping someone will understand and be able to comfort them with the 'problem.'"

This seems to be pervasively prevalent: one girl described how she read others' blogs to learn about people's thoughts without having to talk about it - for example, the quiet kids in her class. However, sharing things you wouldn't normally say online can also cause problems. One girl found a mean comment about herself on someone else's blog by Googling herself - this caused problems between the two girls at schools. Another girl lost a close friend once she blogged about political issues her disagreed with.

Some important questions that arise out of this:

• Are teens are so prone to sharing deeply personal information on-line because they are in search of close relationships, whether with analogue acquaintances or strangers?

• If so, is this search for close relationships online a reflection of problematic or superficial high school relationships? Or is this simply the same reaching out using a new, and public, forum?

• What are the dangers (especially emotional) that go along with exposing oneself so deeply on-line? What are the benefits?