Yep, it’s true. Our priesthood lesson today ended up being a warning to the brethren on the dangers of blogs. In fairness, it was actually a pretty good lesson and the instructor repeated several times that he did not advocate banning blogs any more than he advocated burning books. But it was hard to remember that up front disclaimer with all the other parts on how teenagers these days are all getting into blogging communities and we need to be very careful about that. <\/p>\n
I guess in our stake here in AZ there are lots of the teenagers that are getting in to these online communities. I’m not sure these are actually blogs. The three sites mentioned were MySpace.com<\/a>, Hi5.com<\/a>, and xanga.com<\/a>. I glanced at these and it looks like xanga.com has blogs but I didn’t have patience enough to figure out what the deal with the other two is. (I’m hoping some commenter here will cover for my laziness in that area.) <\/p>\n Anyway, it may be that these gated Web communities have dangers that regular blogging on the the open Web does not have, but the instructor focused on the general topic of Blogging. He said that we ought to be watchful over teenagers because there is all sorts of stuff on these teenage blogs to be concerned about. Then he listed things that sound like all the things that are the staples in any high school in America (angst, bravado, some sexual talk, vulgar language, etc.).<\/p>\n I found the whole thing interesting for several reasons: <\/p>\n First, there was a whole priesthood lesson on blogging! That is odd in itself. I think this is important because blogging is only going to get bigger. If the phenomenon is already big enough to get its own special warning lesson you know it is entering the mainstream.<\/p>\n Second, while there were general disclaimers, the message was to “beware of the wolves at the door”. To me this was not surprising. The tone reminded me of the firesides we used to get in the 80’s trying to freak us out about the evils of modern rock music. (That worked so well on me that I ended up fronting rock bands for the last 15 years…) In other words, the tone was a bit reactionary, though it could have been much, much worse.<\/p>\n Third, the instructor implied that blogs were corrupting our teens. I found the third reason befuddling. Blogs are like journals. Most people blog about what they believe and what they care about. If I want to learn more about what they care about I read the blog, and if I don’t care I don’t read. My point is that unlike other forms of media, no one is trying to persuade me to buy their product in blogs. It is more like reading a lot of editorials. How is that dangerous to teenagers? If the blog content from other teenagers is offensive it is because the contents of those bloggers’ minds are offensive. Blogs contain just what they are thinking. To send a teenager to school every day seems much more spiritually (and physically) dangerous than to let them peruse blogs by other teens. If you can trust a teen to choose real world friends wisely can you not trust them to choose the blogs they read too? At least with blogs they can get away with just a click. It’s a lot harder to get away when the scumbag is across the aisle on the school bus. I fully understand protecting teens against sophisticated marketers of harmful material like porn, etc. I think filters and other protections against online porn are a great idea. But it seems that overreacting to teens blogging is a silly thing to do. Blogs are not going away. When it comes to blogs, I think it is better to learn to choose our content wisely. Joseph taught “…Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves”.<\/p>\n I might add that I brought up the fact that I run an LDS blog and that there is such a thing as the Bloggernacle near the end of the lesson. I think it shocked a few people after the general “beware of the wolves” tone leading up to my comment. <\/p>\n After church one friend asked me for some advice about his teenage daughter’s blog. He wondered if he ought to pull the plug on her. I recommended that he pay attention to the blog, teach her to choose her reading material wisely, but let her do what I am going to do… Blog On.