You crotchety old fuddy duddy.
Seriously, I imagine teenage girls spending hours on the phone was a puzzlement to the last generation to grow up without ubiquitous telephones.
It's a new form of socialization. I'm 36, so a lot of this has evolved since I was 9-12 with dialup BBS giving way (as a somewhat popular thing...they and the internet were around before that) to big dialup services giving way to usenet and internet BBSes.
Even to me online socializing is distinct from personal socializing, but others feel they really know people after chatting online. Some fall in love and get married, although I have my doubts as to how well that works out.
My sister started blogging when she got pregnant, partially as a shortcut to retelling stories to every friend and family member. That's been neater for me than I expected; at first I thought it would be impersonal, but it isn't. My sister and her husband are big into text messaging, too. I've never been much into it, but I see how it's useful to them and how it's differentiated from an email or a phone call.
The phone-a-blog and email-a-blog services are, if you look at it, a natural marriage of interfaces for the social network of a blog system like Blogger, LiveJournal or MySpace. Might not it even be neat if you could phone in and leave a quick post here occasionally? A hot phone tip from Brewer, perhaps? A happy ER thought in the middle of the day far from a PC and connection? Give Nords a waterproof phone and we could get insights from the surf.
Ever read TiogaRV's site? (Motorhome living blog at Blogger / Vagabonds.) I wonder how many other ERs have stories they might share via phone if they knew how? At least George has a PC. (Mr. Vaio?)
(edit: spelling)