Net Geners Are Ideal Bloggers

When blogger and talk show host Mark Finkelstein spoke in our class as a guest today, the very first thing he said struck me the most: "I was watching some of you IMing and text messaging before class. There's all this talk of independent media, but it's the media now. You're all broadcasters and producers whenever you communicate."

As college students and members of the Net Gen, we have been deemed "digital natives." We have never known life without the Internet. Take away our cell phones, iPods and laptops and we lose a lot more than efficient communication - we lose our identity. Who we are is defined by what we do with the technology we use.

As Finkelstein said, we are media producers. A December 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that 64 percent of online teens are content creators. We upload photos and videos. We create web pages and blogs. We join social networking sites.

Net Geners are ideal bloggers. When Educause researched characteristics of the Net Gen in their e-book titled "Educating the Net Generation," they found that we are intuitive visual communicators, are extremely social, crave interaction and expect immediacy in everything we do. We are community centered and global citizens. In jobs, we prioritize happiness and "doing something good" over money and fame.

Blogs are timely. Finkelstein said he often writes a post within an hour of an incident occurring. Blogs are visual. Finkelstein posts videos to complement the text of his blogs. Blogs are social. They thrive on comments and birth new conversations. Most importantly, blogs are influential. They reach people and make a difference.

"Blogging is about having an impact on the world," Finkelstein told us in class today.

If the Net Gen pools its skills and resources into purposeful blogging, our generational legacy will long outlive us. After all, nothing is truly lost in cyberspace.