Hello Echo Ditto! This is my first ever blog post, so bear with me...but first, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Will, and I'm the new intern at the Cambridge office. I'm a 17-year-old rising senior at Bucking Browne and Nichols High School just down the river. I love languages of any sort and I've learned to speak Chinese and Spanish and read Latin. And I enjoy crew, running, computers (built my first PC last year) and video games (notably World of Warcrack).

Anyways, on to the topic of this little blog post: the state of blogging and social networking among teens. I'm not planning to scour the net for survey numbers about Facebook or flickr usage among teenagers and repost them here, so it'll mostly just be a collection of anecdotal evidence and personal experiences.

To address the former: I really think blogs have fed the viral-liberal craze among teens, especially in light of the recent Democratic primary season. I've seen people whom I never would have expected to have any interest in politics talking about Barack Obama. I've seen friends who I would've once classified as not only politically ignorant but also apathetic debating the merits of Hillary Clinton. What drives them to become aware? I think it's the innate curiosity of youth combined with my generation's technological proficiencies. Barack Obama provided the spark and then our familiarity with the internet took over, leading us to liberal blogs such as Huffington Post, which started the cycle again. The more we knew, the more we knew was out there, the more we wanted to find out...and the more we learned.

Second, social networking among teens. The explosive effects of sites such as Facebook have been well-documented, but always, it seems, by older adults who enjoy spouting emotionless statistics. Facebook is more than a phenomenon, it's a way of life for my generation. That's what many older men and women don't understand -- even those who use Facebook! I'd wager that not only is facebook the primary tool for communication for a lot of people, it's actually the single most important activity in their lives, whether they know it or not. That's not to say their other pursuits are irrelevant or meaningless, only that facebook is such an integral part of their lifestyles that it has become necessary for their very existence as an individual. Which brings me to my next point: while some people think that social networking is a dead-end in terms of fundraising, supporting political causes, and online advocacy, I'd like to firmly disagree. While my generation -- still mostly in their late teens and early twenties -- probably doesn't take its facebook causes too seriously, there will be a time when you will seek our support, and you'll have to know how to reach us.

What do I think is the next step? I think the internet has limitless possibilities for future generations. We'll see many more sophisticated combinations and permutations of cell phones and computers (a la Blackberry or iPhone), and, I think, widespread usage of video chat and social networking via these small devices. Beyond that? Who knows? No one could have predicted the internet craze. All I can say is excelsior (for you New York folks) -- ever onward.