OMG! The Family That Blogs Together

 When Rachel Fox returned from a social media conference in May, she found herself empowered and inspired to continue connecting with others through the Internet.

“What I didn’t expect to happen was to come home to a family full of bloggers!” she writes in her blog, referring to her husband and three children’s emergence into the blogosphere.

 Fox has been blogging since she went to Kenya last summer with a group of mothers through ONE, an organization co-founded by musician Bono that is dedicated to fighting poverty and preventable diseases in Africa. Since volunteering with ONE, Fox said she has found her role outside of being a mom and has been inspired to share her story with others. Her blog, Coming Alive, describes the moments that inspire her and rejuvenate her passion for activism.

The concept of “coming alive” isn’t exclusive to her – it's the unifying theme among her husband’s and three children’s blogs. While Fox keeps readers up-to-date on ONE news and global health initiatives, her husband Randolph manages two blogs – one is a conversation between him and his children and the other helps teenagers find their passions. Isabel, 15, uses her blog to tackle life’s big questions and explore the balance between maturity and youthful innocence. Twelve-year-old Jackson’s blog outlines his current journey through middle school in hopes of helping himself and his peers find happiness through it all. Henry, the youngest, uses his blog to share all the spontaneous musings of a busy 11-year-old.

To maintain this voice, the design, wording, grammar and content decisions are left to the discretion of each blogger. Rachel or Randolph, however, read the children’s blog posts aloud before publishing, so the blogger can hear how others will read it. There is also a general rule that schools, friends and family are rarely mentioned by name in order to protect their privacy.

 Social media hasn’t always been part of the Fox’s lives, partly because of their former aversion to technology. But now Rachel and Randolph put their iPhones to good use and are active members of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and forsquare.
 “Our joke is that our little parents are all grown up,” said 11-year-old Henry.

While the Foxs are still learning to use the technology that surrounds them, they have noticed the benefits of online sharing.

 “Now that I’m online, I have seen that social media can be used for so much good,” Rachel Fox said. “And not just advocacy good for nonprofits and those things, it can be used for the kids finding their voice, for supporting each other, for finding community.”

 The Fox family has no intention of slowing down. Isabel has plans to incorporate multimedia elements into her blog, Jackson wants to chronicle his visits to skateboard parks and college cafeterias and Henry is considering turning his blog into an on-going interactive story with a cliff hanger at the end of each post.

“To me it feels like starting the blogs has kind of lifted our energy,” Rachel said.