Is blogging innocent fun or potential danger for girls?
She's part of a young generation of fashion bloggers who display pictures of their outfits for all to see.
"Well I am new here," she wrote March 31 in her first post at Style Rookie. "Lately I've been really interested in fashion, and I like to make binders and slideshows of 'high-fashion' modeling and designs."
To some wary adults, she's in a world where she doesn't belong. Unlike a typical social network page, a blog can be seen by anyone. And at least one young fashion blogger says she's been recognized by strangers on the street — a worrisome turn for adults worried about privacy and predators.
For the young bloggers, it's a chance to keep track of their obsession, with input from friends or other fashion fans.
"I just kind of wanted to document my outfits, and it was just a random thing that wasn't in relation to anything," says Brooke Kao, the Washington-based blogger of The Fashion Void That Is DC. Kao recently turned 18, but she was 16 when she started writing posts about what she wore.
"Parents have no idea what their kids are doing online," Aftab says. "Most parents have no idea what a blog is."
Concerns about internet safety for children have been fueled by such tragedies as the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier in Missouri. She hanged herself after receiving nasty online comments from a MySpace friend that turned out to be the creation of two acquaintances and a neighbor.
Although the federal government requires extra protection for Internet users who are younger than 13, not every Web site follows COPPA, or the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Aftab notes that the social networking site Xanga.com was fined $1 million in 2006, accused of allowing preteens to create accounts without informing their parents.
Some young bloggers are taking their own steps to protect their privacy. Kao crops her face from photos, while 16-year-old Stephanie Ullman erased an early blog because too many kids at her school found it.
"I'm not a very private person," she says. "I share a lot of information to people, I guess more than I probably should. But I just felt that I didn't want the people who are very close to me reading it because I guess I'm embarrassed about my writing sometimes."
It's that sharing of information with strangers that concerns mothers like Addie Swartz, CEO of the media company B-tween Productions and a mother of two teenage daughters. Swartz's company is launching a special social networking site for girls ages 9 to 12 because Swartz felt kids need "a safe place that lets them try out Facebook" without giving them opportunities to post personal data that blogs allow.
Recent comments
I found this article quite interesting. I know lots of girls- both…
Anonymous | Sept. 8, 2008 at 3:40 p.m.
