Is blogging still a thing?

The quick answer is no. 

In today’s age of Tiktok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, and general short-form content, blogging isn't exactly the format that screams attention-grabbing nor revenue-generating.

If we ask our ever-reliable Wikipedia, blogging is defined as “an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries.”

Essentially— words. Written format. The original approach. The great-great grandparent used by bloggers, turned vloggers, then influencers, and now content creators. 

Truthfully, blogging can be categorized as an outdated type of content format. 

The human attention span has created a wall with anything more than 280 characters. 

We instantly scroll down once we see that more button to read the full caption. 

Heck, even viewing piled up Instagram stories has turned into an instant pass. 

The generation at present craves for things fast and immediate. 

Visuals over words. 

Speed over pace. 

So, why blog? 

Because social media needs to calm down. 

There’s so much content. So much clutter. Sometimes good clutter, sometimes bad clutter. 

Despite the ocean of content and information it holds, at one point it can all feel like a bunch of randomness. Our visual and hearing senses are highly engaged but actual mind stimulation is rare. It has to be intentional to actually consume content that holds some sort of value. 

Scroll, tap away, scroll, tap away.

Then do it again, do it again. 

With blogging, though the channel is outdated, I reckon that the tool is timeless. The tool, that is — writing. 

Words are still one of the most powerful tools to communicate and storytell. It’s a cohesive approach to actually sit down, put your thoughts into words, and say what you want to say. 

Words simmer on the onset, make their way into our minds, and eventually into our souls. It takes more time and effort to consume but it allows us to reread and revisit. It allows a much slower pace, an outlier from the ecosystem we’re accustomed with.

Writing also requires a different skill set altogether, giving the writer a different challenge to knit what they want to communicate to their audience in the form of well-arranged words. 

So to answer — blogging probably isn’t a thing anymore.

Come to think of it, I can't even come up with a list of bloggers who write actual written blog formats that aren’t in the form of media blogs, cooking recipes, or listicles. 

But any thing can always turn into something. 

And that thing can be blogging.