Has blogging harmed civic knowledge and political participation in this country? Believe it or not, there’s a case to be made that blogging has hurt, rather than helped, our political culture. Despite some problems, I think that political blogging has been a huge net plus for this country. But not all blogging is political blogging. The number of personal blogs is growing exponentially among teens, along with the use of other forms of communications technology. Now Mark Bauerlein makes the case that the communications revolution has hurt civic knowledge and participation, not helped it. Here is Bauerlein’s article from the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “A Very Long Disengagement.”

I don’t know if Bauerlein is right. But at a minimum he is highlighting a side of the blogging phenomenon that has not been sufficiently discussed.