At Pittsburgh CAPA and North Allegheny Senior High School, the gossip bouncing through the hallways recently took on a heightened life of its own in an Internet zone increasingly frequented by teenagers: the blogosphere.

North Allegheny students, posting messages on their online forum, www.nasucks.com, ping-ponged back and forth over a report that school officials had called students into the office to question them about the site's content.

And a controversy over a school administrator's alleged ban on same-sex couples and friends holding hands, hugging or kissing at Downtown Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School prompted a furious and instantaneous call for protest on another student-fed forum, www.livejournal.com/community/anticrapa/.

"Find a buddy of your own gender, hold hands with them whenever possible," one CAPA student wrote on March 17. "Make out in the halls with anyone you can find."

		Navigating the 'blogosphere' avatar -- An illustration, symbol or photograph used to represent a blogger online. blog, short for Web log -- A chronological online diary that friends and other online observers can read and comment on. Updating the blog is "blogging," and the writer of the blog is called a "blogger." blogroll -- List of links to other blogs. emoticon -- Animated face that illustrates the writer's state of mind when making the post: cheerful, stressed, worried, hopeful. IM -- Instant messenger, instant message. A program that usually can be downloaded for free, allowing two or more people to chat on their computers or cell phones by sending text "instant messages." live journal -- Used generically as another term for blog. Specifically, the name of one of several blog hosting sites, which also include xanga.com, deadjournal.com, blogspot.com and journal-space.com. Some sites require registration for full access. post -- A message submitted to a blog or online forum. Usually has a date and time stamp attached. slot -- Notation on a blog entry or online forum of the writer's mood, often including the music he or she is listening to. username -- A blogger's screen name or handle that often includes part of the writer's real name. Sometimes expresses part of the writer's online persona or real personality. </SMALL>
	&/TD>

Gossip, angst and attitude have long defined teenage communication, extending their tendrils through passed notes and meandering telephone calls as teens hash out happenings both mundane and profound in their lives: a friend's detention, a glance from a cute girl, worries about an impending college application, a crush on an apparently oblivious guy.

But with ever-greater access to the Internet, those conversations are occurring ever-more publicly as a growing number of teenagers create blogs, or web logs, and other online forums -- and more of their friends read and respond to those journal entries. While Instant Messaging on the tiny screen of a cell phone is still popular, in the past year or so, many teenagers have come to prefer the unlimited space of a blog.

This "blogosphere," experts say, has an estimated 2 million to 4 million personal journals, with kids ages 13 to 19 maintaining about half of them. A majority of those teenagers -- from 53 percent to 67 percent, depending on the estimate -- are girls, according to David Huffaker of Northwestern University, who researches the development of online youth communities, including blogs.

"Think of them as a diary," Huffaker said. "They talk about school, college pressure, music, bands, concerts, love interests. Then there are more dangerous topics, sex and drugs."

Most blogs written by individuals -- as opposed to forums, which are written by multiple members -- often include pictures, clips from movies and music as well as text. They allow readers to respond to an entry -- and many do, often creating an ongoing conversation or debate. While some blogs, which are created through host sites such as livejournal.com, xanga.com and blogspot.com, require passwords for entry, many can be located by entering the blogger's username or screen name into a search box on the host site.

Some kids who maintain and respond to blogs give their real names, ages and ways to contact them -- possibly opening the way to cyber stalking, Huffaker said. Most, however, use fictitious names and choose pictures or "avatars" of movie stars, video game characters, animals or other symbols to represent them in their user profiles, even though the other people reading their blog often are friends from school or other activities.

That partial anonymity, experts say, gives bloggers a feeling of protection from scrutiny -- and potentially from the consequences of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person -- that satisfies the simultaneous, dueling needs of privacy and intimacy.

And that, Huffaker said, makes many teenagers feel more comfortable revealing details they otherwise have shared only with a few intimate friends, and venting frustration and anger when school or friends or work just become too much to take.

"It's a safe space to come off as ranting and raving," he said.

Sometimes, blogs and online forums sound like idle telephone chatter about jeans or movies, or like school-hallway wisecracks about an offending teacher. At other times, they resemble confessional diary entries detailing fears, self-doubt and longing that invite friends' supportive comments -- and potentially, a request for a date from the writer's object of affection.

"You hope he'll find it and read it and catch on," said Ashley Wise, a junior at CAPA who maintains three blogs and sometimes posts replies on her friends' blogs as well.

For teenagers, blogs and online forums are a way to connect, to fit in and be part of things at a time when they're trying to find a place of their own in the world, said Linda Perlstein, author of " 'Not Much, Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers."

In blogs, youngsters sometimes criticize but more often affirm each other's importance and point of view.

"It's a little like having a boyfriend at 12, which isn't necessarily about having the boyfriend as much as it's about having something to talk about, having decisions to make with your friends about what you're supposed to do," Perlstein said. "It's not always, 'I have these innermost thoughts I must share with the world,' but more like a way to socialize."

At other times, though, blogs become a kind of group discussion board as friends post replies to each other's messages. On the nasucks.com forum, students discussed how to react if administrators called them to the office and defended their posts on the site, which evaluates more than 200 teachers and administrators on a scale of one to five.

They hadn't done anything but exercise their First Amendment rights, they said. And anyway, most of the evaluations were glowing, they said, referring to comments about high school principal Lawrence Butterini such as "the man is never negative. if we were getting nuked, dr b would be able to convince everyone that our faces were not about to be melted off by a nuclear blast."

And at CAPA, students used their blog to follow the twists and turns of the controversy over what they considered an administrative crackdown on students of the same sex who held hands, hugged or kissed at school.

"Haha you have to go to school tomorrow and i don't!!! i am suspended, yes. i was holding hands with a girl, yes. it was completely non-sexual," one female student wrote March 17.

Had she done anything else to provoke her suspension, like yell at an administrator? Nope, the girl replied -- just held hands and skipped with another girl.

(CAPA's principal, Michael Thorsen, declined to comment on why the girl was suspended, and said that inappropriate behavior with sexual connotations, such as kissing, was not tolerated regardless of sexual orientation.)

The next day, students from the blog said, they met with administrators and passed out hearts with sayings such as "love is not a sexual orientation" and "I hold hands with girls" to fellow students. By that afternoon, the situation had been resolved, students later posted on the forum.

"If we are to relax a bit (which would be wise), we should also make it clear that, even though the situation has been 'handled', it has not been forgotten," one student wrote.

Such blog postings can shape school controversies by putting rumors and speculation into print for multiple readers, said Thorsen, who noted he has no control over what students post outside of school hours. About two dozen CAPA students are members of the forum, and still more read the messages those members post.

"People tend to believe everything they read, so if they see it on the Internet or in print they assume it to be fact," said Thorsen, acknowledging he is aware of the CAPA blog. "So people can get a false impression and believe it to be fact."

Given that tendency, experts say, parents shouldn't feel shy about looking in on how their teenagers are using blogs. Once assured they're mostly talking with friends, venting frustrations or writing poetry, though, parents probably shouldn't look every day unless they have a reason to be suspicious, according to Perlstein.

Lynn Wise, Ashley's mom, believes in keeping a regular eye on her daughter's computer use, sometimes reading over Ashley's shoulder while she is on the computer, which the Crafton Heights family keeps in the front hallway. She also occasionally asks to see what Ashley has been writing about in her blogs.

Two weeks ago, when another parent's freshman daughter skipped school, didn't answer her cell phone and didn't come home overnight, Wise's advice was to check the girl's Internet activity.

"I said to her mother, 'Go online and find out what she's been talking about' and she said, 'I have no idea how to get into her e-mail.' I was floored," Wise said. "It's not about being nosy or mean. It's about being technologically savvy and it's about being proactive as parents."

But with most blog conversations centering on nothing more troubling than pet peeves, spring break, college prospects and crushes, most parents can stop worrying about what their kids are writing in their online journals -- including what their kids are writing about them.

"A couple of really nice days, quality time together, crashing through my neighbor's hedge, getting along, it was wonderful," one CAPA student recently wrote about her dad.

"He's a great guy, if an irritating one, and I think this break has taught me that I need to spend more time with him or that I need to be more forgiving of him or something. Whatever, it was chill, you know?"