September 23, 2026 · Taipei, Taiwan

Blogging in the big two six!

At first I thought I had maybe reached rock bottom but the more thought I gave the matter, the more I realized this might actually be ascension. Why on earth did we, as a society, ever stop blogging? This is my treatise on the decline of the blog as it correlates with the increased frequency of isolation and the so-called loneliness epidemic plaguing our youth:

The advent of the internet brought with it a new kind of connection, previously unheard of in human history. Suddenly, there was a space where each and every thought you had could be posted for people all over the world to have access to. Many now exploit this very feature, leaving others to have no other choice but to comment “did the journal factory explode?”.

Jokes aside, the internet made us connected in ways no one could have imagined even 50 years ago. I was born in 2003, and just missed the tail-end of the MySpace era. I never could figure out how to use tumblr in my youth (likely for the best…), and the new age of social media giants such as Instagram never felt, to me, like the proper space to share long form written-out thoughts in written form. Back in the early days of Instagram, you were limited to just one post, and a certain number of words. As Instagram has grown, you are now able to upload multiple photos at once, several-minute-long videos, and seemingly endless diatribes in both the caption as well as the comment section. For better or for worse, Instagram killed the blog. What it replaced it with, however, feels like a soulless replica of something that was once near and dear to many peoples’ hearts.

As someone who missed the peak of the Blog Age, I never had much of an urge to start my own blog. Yet recently, after years on Instagram, scrolling through reel after reel, photo after photo of people posting only the most perfect moments of their lives, I began to feel a deep sense of disconnect from what my life was and what I was seeing online. Seemingly everyone was always in a different country, at a beach, drinking beautifully aesthetic cocktails in a bathing suit that perfectly matched with the picture’s color palette. Swiping through on my breaks as I worked my tedious job in a city I hated made me crave more than anything to escape the monotony that had become my life.

And then, just like that, I was awarded a scholarship to go to Taiwan. I imagined all of the brilliantly colored photos I would upload to Instagram on the daily, finally having my turn in the sun (quite literally, in fact). I pushed through the grueling months of living in my hometown, knowing that there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel. And yet, three weeks into my trip, I just couldn’t shake the insurmountable feeling of loneliness permeating every conversation, every meal, every shallow IG story post I made. I started to ask what was wrong with me? Did years of being a shut-in who only focused on her grades and finances turn me cold and heartless?

I love connecting with people, to the point where I often get mistaken for an extrovert at first meet. But there’s always a moment when I’m out having a great time with friends where I suddenly feel just a little bit too aware. Bonus points if I’m at a bar, as I don’t like the taste of alcohol and tend not to drink much. It’s a very sobering feeling to all of a sudden realize you’re the least fun and/or least tipsy person at the function. And once it sets in, it’s not something I can shake. I start overanalyzing everything I’ve set up until that point, trying to gauge if I’ve been too annoying or too quiet. The overthinking starts to seep into every interaction. Why did they turn away from me? Who’s joke are we laughing at? Did I do something? echoes through my head until suddenly, I’m no longer having a good time.

This exact phenomenon is one that I have never quite heard anyone else talk about, but at the same time, have I ever asked? But back to blogs, a blog is the antithesis to the rhetorical statement “Who asked?”. A blog is a space where you can share your thoughts unabashed, uninterrupted, to deliver unto the masses (or in my case, perhaps two or three people). A part of me yearns to have lived in the Blog Age. While I’m sure it had it’s immense downsides in some respect, to get a view inside somebody’s mind, free from adulteration by AI and not as subject to the pressures of performance like today’s social media, seems like a tool that could make people come closer. I’ve had my blog for all of 2 hours so far, and yet I’m giddy at the thought. I’m trying to get all of my friends to start their own blogs. I want something where we can share updates, pieces of each others’ lives, random thoughts or songs we liked, without “clogging up the groupchat”. To use as a tool to help people catch up when there’s only an hour for the two of you to meet before one of you has to leave for a work meeting. A glimpse into my friends’ lives while I’m 7000 miles away would be a beautiful thing. Of course, not every blog will show both the downs as well as the ups, but at least here on my blog, I intend to try.

Perhaps in our struggle to connect the world through the internet, we lost the throughline that connected our thoughts and feelings, the things that make us human. Perhaps the loneliness epidemic really just boils down to “we aren’t blogging enough”.

~Liz