Tuesday 25 April 2006

Grayblogging

Some extracts from a A New York Times article titled Elderbloggers Stake Their Claim, by Lee Roberts.
With a breadth of experience and perspective, older bloggers are staking out a place in the blogosphere — a medium overwhelmingly dominated by the young. Perhaps more attentive to grammar and less likely to use cutesy cyberspeak,
heh.
older bloggers expound on topics as varied as poetry and politics, gardening and grandmothering. According to a recent report by the Perseus Development Corporation, a research company that studies online trends, the Internet is home to approximately 54.3 million blogs, nearly 60 percent written by people younger than 19. Just 0.3 percent of blogs are run by people 50 or older, yet that's still about 160,000 bloggers.
"I'm 81 years old and this blog has opened up a whole new world to me," Mr. Reichek said. "And I'm not doing this because I'm a lonely old man. I don't lack for social interaction. I find it a fascinating hobby, and a fruitful one."In one posting, Mr. Reichek wrote about what he thought was the insanity of the Iraq war, which prompted volleys of comments from pro- and antiwar partisans. "There were 14 or 15 people using my blog to have an argument about their positions on the war," he said.
Familiar?
"It's kind of like talking over the backyard fence," he said. "Like a neighborhood."
While the 65-plus age range is notoriously tech-shy, many say that the blog-hosting companies make it simple to start and maintain one. [..] "I'm a technophobe," he said. "But 1, 2, 3 and suddenly, I've got a blog."


Read the whole thing

And visit the blogs cited:
Late Life Crisis
Time Goes By ["has links to more than 100 blogs written by people 50 and older, many of them 65 and older."]
octogenarian.blogspot.com
Milt's Muse

And then go persuade a senior citizen you know to start blogging.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks much for your link to Late Life Crisis, Zig (If I may address you so familiarly). What an interesting blog you have here - it brings something different to the scene.