Teen Identification on the Web!

It is surprising how many teens provide personal information that helps to identify who they really are on personal blogs as shown in the study "Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs" by David Huffaker and Sandra Calvert . I have had previous discussions with UBTigger about our fears that our kids offer too much information about their true selves, thus making them possible easy targets for the unscrupulous people in cyberspace. This particular study seems to substantiate our worries.

After reading the study, I relooked at the information offered in my blog, personal website, and home email accoutn. There are obvious personal identificaiton facts that I gave out that could be used to get a true identification of who I am or where to find me. Which of course will bring me to make changes.

I was not surprised, however, to see that one of diaghrams idicates that boys tend to "embellish" more within their blogs, and that girls tend to use communication and emoticons more often than boys. Aren't these typical characteristics of teens anyways?