The blogging generation gap

A few weeks ago, my Mom and I had a conversation about my blog. She had finally started reading my posts, and found it interesting yet a bit too revealing. The idea of divulging personal details about one's life to be potentially read by anyone with an internet connection made her somewhat uncomfortable. There is something almost confessional about blogging - like you're writing in your diary that no one else will read. It makes you write things you normally wouldn't say to others face to face. I know someone who has a very personal blog but keeps her identity anonymous. However, her friends still know it's her. I wonder if she would say in person the things she writes (on her fascinating blog that you should read). SingleGirl, if you're reading this, any comments?

My mom’s concern of revealing too much personal information online could be labeled a blogging generation gap. This interesting NY Magazine article makes this very argument. It claims that kids today have a very different sense of privacy than older generations. There's also the cult of "regular" celebrities spawned by reality shows and internet 15-minutes-of-famers that makes younger generations feel like everyone can have an audience. The article also argues they're less sensitive to criticism and don't get personally crushed when someone makes a nasty comment about a photo they posted online. As someone who falls between this new generation and their parents, I wonder where generation Xers fit into this. Many of us are technologically sophisticated and work new media related fields. Are we some interim category, more willing to put information online but still secretly cringing at it on the inside?

So are my Mom's concerns valid? So what if friends, acquaintances, and strangers know I'm going through a career crisis, that I barely averted colon cancer in 5 years, or that I'm an atheist?

Ironically, there is much more information about both my Mom and Dad online than there is about me. Googling my family (with full names in quotation marks) elicits the following results:

Me: 172 hits

My dad: 589 hits

My mom (using her pen name): 1230 hits

So what's more revealing? The things I say about myself on my blog, or the dossier you can put together on both of my parents using a simple google search, including the political campaigns they've donated to, job changes in the local news, address histories, real estate sales, publications, etc.?