The church was worried about the age of post-literacy, when young people stopped reading books and stared mindlessly into the TV screen. It is probable that we have moved on from that stage to the age of post-post-literacy - where TV watching is replaced by reading, writing, blogging, messaging, phone-texting, sms'ing, journalling, selfpublishing, etc.
My 11 year old daughter Elizabeth, for example, spends time each night writing a novel. She expects to publish it soon, probably within the year. She doesn't think that being 11 years old will hold her back. She is a part of Generation Text. So is my 9 year old daughter Abigail, who has her own blog.
How old are bloggers? Most of them are very young
A survey showed that out of 4,120,000 bloggers:
55,500 are aged 10-12
2,120,000 are aged 13-19
1,630,000 are aged 20-29
241,000 are aged 30-39
41,700 are aged 40-49
18,500 are aged 50-59
13,900 are aged 60-69
[Thanks Jonny Baker for those numbers.]
Douglas Rushkoff in Open Source Democracy (Download PDF) noted that the Renaissance turned hearers into readers, and the current renaissance in writing is turning readers into writers. Some of us, and i include my old wrinkled self, are at times writing more than we read. We are also surrounded by technology that makes it easy to "publish glad tidings daily".
What a world! Welcome to Generation Text.
Those numbers are interesting, didn't realize that ages 13-19 had such huge numbers. Thanks for the info.
Posted by: Michael Finegan | December 12, 2004 at 06:42 PM
Well, as one of the 13-19 people, I think this post is very good. I was thinking yesterday about how this generation is centered around expressing itself through communication. Texting, email, IM, chat, mobiles, phones, SMS, blogging, online journals, etc etc... Generation Text. I like it! :D
Posted by: Isaac | December 12, 2004 at 08:35 PM
tallskinnykiwi
im worried about a big tower i heard they were going to build in austrailia to fix the sky. Im worried about this ,because some people say it could make even worse problems.do you know anything about this? you look very young to be a pastor. when is your date of birth?
Posted by: shellyp | January 06, 2005 at 11:09 PM