I’ve recently been musing over the viability of children blogging. The child would develop writing skills and, as long as they were allowed free reign over topic choice and content, they would enjoy the experience. And, let’s not forget the potential income that the child could generate. This could be used to fund future education and act as a non traditional college fund.
With children spending more and more time writing, for example, music reviews on social networking sites, blogging is clearly something that a literate child could accomplish. All it would take is a net savvy parent to arrange hosting and a domain name and then install wordpress and a nice looking theme. The child would figure out the nuts and bolts of running a blog as they went along.
Ok, I can already hear some people saying that this is a crazy idea. What about comment spam? How can we prevent a child being exposed to the sort of thing that would result in a potentially uncomfortable parental conversation? Sure, there are problems, but with proper supervision a child could really enjoy blogging and be kept safe. Furthermore, I can guarantee that a child is safer online when they are writing their own blog than they would ever be on any social networking site.
Potentially the blog could grow into a long term source of income or even a future business.
When I was seven I considered myself the worlds leading authority on the Star Wars universe. The film was released when I was seven years old and, as I’m sure you can imagine, I was a typical Star Wars fan. I collected the figures, the stickers, the cards and anything else I could get my hands on. Had the internet been around then I would have been more than happy to blog to my hearts content about by latest obsession. Even with the most basic monetization a blog like this, run enthusiastically, could have generated an income whilst at the same time building a good reputation in the eyes of Google, or whatever search engine was hypothetically around when I was seven.
Of course, the internet was a long way off. Even my first computer, an Atari 400 that will always have a special place in my memory, was many years away. I’m sure you take my point though.
Give a child a publishing opportunity and the possibilities are only limited by the child’s imagination and enthusiasm.
If, like me, you’re a parent, consider giving your child, or children, the gift of a blog and see how things develop. You might be pleasantly surprised.
when i went back to the school system, i decided that i was going to use wpmu to build a site for kids. i’ve seen kids as young as 5th grade blog. it’s a start. i’ve convinced the editor of the high school school newspaper/letter to let me build them a nice magazine theme.
Well, i think you are right, you are never to young. But i would say that child’s under a certain age should only write a blog with help from other - older - people, cause i think some child’s would write about things they better should not write about. But that’s a thing you have to look different with different children. One needs more help / tips / censorship and the other can write on its own.
I normally leave my wpmu link here, but elsewhere on the net I run a site for homeschoolers, and not only are there a fair bit of children blogging there, ALL of my own kids have blogs set up.
Even the seven year old.
Blogs for kids is also hot in the education circles, as it actually helps kids become literate, among other bonuses. My older children (teens) are pretty computer-literate at this point. I can send you links to their stuff and some aerticles we’ve been the focus of.
As with anything your kids do, have copies of their passwords and read their blog to see what they’re saying. ;)
I think this is a perfectly legitimate outlet for children. I was just at my Father’s house and digging deep into some boxes of clutter and found a book that had questionnaires for each grade in my elementary school years. I started filling this out in 1st grade and some of the answers I wrote in there are both hilarious, and telling.
Having a child make regular posts to their own blog is akin to keeping a written diary or scrapbook, the difference is that it’s all stored digitally. If you’re concerned about privacy, you could just host the blog on a local server, or if on a public server, you can set WordPress to block search engines.
I think it’s a great idea.
I guess you are right. It’ll only improve their knowledge, and it’ll function as a online diary as well. But, I think it is not a good idea to make that blog public, there are strange people out there…
Currently, I am a seventeen year old guy from Holland. I think blogging is good for the learning process from shitty English, to writing English on a acceptable level. That’s one reason to do so.
As I said, blogging for younger kids is a good thing, as long as you keep it private.