The differences between women, men, teens, almost teens.

When I was going over the reading for today, I was thinking about the graphs that there are in the reading where they show who and how many are using blogs, and online journals and etc.

I think that it is interesting to think of the reasons why the different demographics blog and why some don’t blog as much.

In the first graph, it is a graph charting the usage in teens verse adults and within that is female and male bloggers. Female users are more prominent as teenagers. I think that there is a reason for that which is related to the fact that teenage girls really want to talk. When it comes down to it, girls want to talk and since they are teenagers, it is a little awkward talking to either their parents or other teenagers, and by other teenagers I mean boys. The article that I found relating to this was in USA today http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-10-30-teen-blogs_x.htm.

I think that boys who are teenagers are also less likely to blog during those years because they are more awkward and like to be silent as opposed to talking. Teenage boys usually don’t even like talking on the phone, let alone getting them to write online journals.

As teenagers grow up, I think there is a social change between men and women. Women become more likely to stop blogging and men become more likely to start blogging. Men become more interested in things online and I think that is a reason why they start blogging more. I think they want to have a place where they can let out personal and even emotional things considering that is socially unacceptable when they do it all the time in the open and in real person. I think that women are socially allowed to do that kind of thing. It is almost expected for them to be emotional and personal when in public and in real life so they may be less likely to feel the need to do it online.

The other charts were quite similar and they expressed the same results. That at younger ages, girls are more likely to have weblogs of some sort and as they grow older, through the emerging adult to full fledged adulthood, girls simply fall out of the blogging communities. Boys however are less likely to belong to these communities as teenagers because of the socially awkwardness and the unmotivated ness to talk on the phone, online, or through text messaging. When these teenage boys grow up to be men, they are faced with the unacceptability of their emotions and feelings and live in fear of not being “real men.” Writing on the internet could potentially be an outlet for them to express themselves and still maintain their strong persona in the real world.

I think that is very interesting after reading this article to think about the differences between men, women, teenage boys, and teenage girls. There really is a difference in their abilities to socialize and to express themselves as a result of their age and I think that as they grow older it either becomes not as necessary or a an alternative route to expression depending on men or women. .