Last week, in a discussion about how to make sure that students are using the Internet in a safe and appropriate, the idea that everything one the web was put there with an agenda was brought up. The idea was that by helping children understand the agenda of the writer, the children could make better choices on what to do with the information posted.

I’m known in that group as a blogger, and it felt like people were wondering about my agenda in writing what I do online. I’ve often written about why people blog, but I thought it would be good to take another view at this, in the context of the agenda’s of the writers.

I glance at the tweets my friends are writing and at the top of the list is someone talking about the Cavs being undefeated at home so far this year. Yes, the person who wrote that had some agenda in writing it. It isn’t the same sort of grand agenda that people think about when they talk about making sure children understand the agenda of the writers of websites they visit, but it is part of the continuum.

Over on Facebook, a person writes about her frustrations of having to fix things breaking at home while money is tight during a recession. Again, there is an agenda there, but it is much different than the agenda of other sites.

Is there a good way to organize and think about these agendas? It seems like Abraham Maslow may provide some useful insights from his famous paper, A Theory of Human Motivation. We all have a hierarchy of needs, and what motivates us in what we write online is perhaps no different than what motivates us in other aspects of our lives.

The most primitive needs are physiological. We need food and shelter. Some people write for money, and some of that may simply be to put bread on the table, or simply to have a table that bread can be put upon. Amongst blogs, there are plenty of Make Money Online blogs. While they may be seeking money for other reasons as well, it seems like they fit in this category.

When you go to most online news sites, they are part of organizations that are trying to make money, via advertising to pay their staff. Again, this gets to those primitive needs of money for food and shelter, and also, perhaps, for a little bit more.

Any site that depends on advertising to make money is going to be concerned with visitors. They will want to give visitors what they want, entertainment, having their views reinforced, etc. They may claim to be ‘objective’, because that might be another quality that visitors are looking for, but it is about meeting basic physiological needs.

The next level up is safety needs. We all need to feel safe. In political blogs, we often find people talking about safety. How do we remain safe from terrorists? How do we remain safe from people that would do away with our rights for their own benefit? We send messages about accidents on Facebook and Twitter, perhaps, in part, to let other people know of dangers so that they can remain safe.

Beyond our needs of safety, we have social needs. All this talk about social media seems to point to our social needs. We need friendship and a sense of self worth. We get that by having friends follow us on social media and by letting them know what we are up to. In exchange, they let us know what we are up to.

Above this, in Maslow’s hierarchy, we find aesthetic needs. I visit some wonderful artblogs that seem to deal with this.

So, how does this relate to blogging as well as appropriate uses of the Internet? It seems like people worry about kids that disregard safety needs in search of friendship. I don’t think this is something specific to the Internet, and we need to help people, both parents and children understand the relationships between friendship and safety.

And why do I blog? Well, it would be nice to make a buck here and there, and I do hope that some of my writing helps me land good jobs from time to time. However, I also recognize that being outspoken can be a hindrance in meeting physiological and sometimes even safety needs.

I would like to think that my blogging serves some sort of good, some higher goal. For me, much of it is about getting people more involved in their communities and addressing problems of government that thwart that.

In the end, however, perhaps I don’t have a great clear reason why I blog. Perhaps many of us don’t. Nonetheless, I’d love to hear other bloggers thoughts about why they blog and how it relates to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.