Study finds blogging is good for you

by Rich Bowden - Mar 4 2008, 02:34

A new study has found blogging regularly tends to make a person feel less isolated, more satisfied with their existing friendships and more part of a community.

Photo: Jesper Balslev. Credit: Jacob Botter/Flickr

Researchers James Baker and Professor Susan Moore from the Swinburne University of Technology studied people who blogged regularly for two months and found participants who agreed to take part in the extended period of blogging benefited compared to those that didn't. Their study compares the mental health of these two groups of people.Initially the researchers contacted 600 MySpace users and asked them to fill out an online questionnaire. Of the 134 who completed the questionnaire; 84 said they intended to blog while 50 said they didn't."We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn't feel as much part of a community as the people who weren't interested in blogging ... they were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping," Moore says. "It was as if they were saying 'I'm going to do this blogging and it's going to help me'."The second half of the experiment asked the same respondents how they felt after two months of blogging. The bloggers were more likely to say they had found more acceptance and had benefited from the experience. All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking."So going onto MySpace had lifted the mood of all participants in some way," Moore says. "Maybe they'd just made more social connections."The researchers have said the study has convinced them of the psychological benefits of blogging and have said they intend to carry out further, more in-depth, research on the subject.They have had previous research on the subject published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behaviour.

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A gittel blogging goes along way!Mar 4th, 2008 - 15:40:34

This article is absolutely correct. I have clients who hire my company to blog on their behalf and have reported feeling better after our blogging efforts. The reason being, people respond to the messages our clients ask us to put out to the world and they receive communication back from would be clients, colleagues, fans, etc. Also, many of our clients are too busy to research for their blogs and ask my company to find them the information they would like to know and share for their blog. This provides forward motion and education for our clients and they feel as if they are contributing positively to their goals. Everyone should blog.

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