Here's one of the youth organizations I founded - @blogxploremagazine! The main purpose of BlogXplore is to connect Gen Z bloggers around the world so that there can be a large community of writers who can support one another. These days, many members of Gen Z have started to create blogs so that they can have a creative outlet and our magazine brings together all of these different types of blogs and their creators.
1. What inspired you to create @blogxploremagazine?
When I was in 9th grade, I created a blog to write op-ed pieces and have a place to share my thoughts with people since I was a very quiet, shy person. As I started to write more articles, I had a hard time actually getting followers and realized that you need to become friends with other bloggers to grow traffic to your own blog. After a few months of having my blog, I started to have hundreds of teenage blogger friends from around the world and my blog immensely grew in followers and traffic. I figured out that community means everything to bloggers and their growth so I wanted there to be a place where bloggers can come together to support and read one another's articles. BlogXplore Magazine aims to provide a large community of bloggers for all the gen z writers as well as all sorts of creators. We want to have a place for creators around the world to come together and have a strong community where they can support and learn from one another.
2. How do you hope to shape our generation with your blog?
With my own personal blog (sincerelymanasa.com), I hope to shape our generation by teaching them more about reading diversely since I run a book blog now. But, with BlogXplore Magazine, I hope to shape our generation by making sure that all the gen Z creators can have a real place to connect with more creators like themselves. As a creator myself, I know how hard it is for creators to grow, so I hope that BlogXplore can offer a strong community that creates a generation of strong, supported, and confident bloggers. I hope to help create a place where the creators of our generation can really be supported and be encouraged to create more impactful content.
3. Why do you think blogging is so prevalent in our society today? Please discuss both the positives and negatives (if applicable).
Blogging can be both good and bad, but its good qualities definitely outweigh the bad. Blogging offers people a place to put out all of their opinions and perspectives. It serves as an outlet for many who have difficulty expressing themselves outside of their own brains. Writers can vastly improve their own writing skills while also getting feedback from other bloggers around them. I know that with my own experience, blogging changed me. As a fairly quiet and unsociable kid at school, blogging introduced me to this whole new world where I was accepted for being a shy writer. I found so many bloggers like myself and I had the realization that there are so many people in the world who are just like me. Blogging helps to connect people internationally. Many of my best friends live in India, the Netherlands, Canada, the UK, France, Australia, and so many other countries. In this technology age, blogging is bringing together all the writers out there to share what they are passionate about without judgment. The one negative aspect of blogging is its connection to social media. Due to the huge dependence on social media, as bloggers, we need to rely on social media to drive traffic and newer audiences to our blog. With social media, comes hate for our writing and our opinions because so many people can openly see your thoughts.
4. What is your perspective on creating and how do you think it changes people.
Any type of creating offers people an outlet to push their dreams, thoughts, hopes, perspectives, and emotions into something else so they don’t have to keep it within themselves. Creating makes people stronger and increases their own confidence. I know that without being a creator, I wouldn’t have an outlet where I could place all my opinions through writing. Creating makes you bolder while also providing you a following with who you can share your work! It’s amazing to write articles or take photos and be able to publish them so that readers around the world can also be impacted by what you’re creating.
5. Do you believe that blogging can bring the same benefits as reading newspapers or traditional paper magazines?
I think that all of these can bring the same benefits but the quality of the writing is what changes between blogs and traditional articles. Blogging is much more unrefined than what’s in newspapers and traditional paper magazines. Writers for these professional newspapers and magazines have studied English or are professional freelance writers. Many bloggers are just people who write for fun as a side-gig since it brings them pleasure. But, readers can get the same content out of professional publications and various blogs. At the end of the day, everyone around the world is writing about the same things so reading blogs is equivalent to reading other things as well!