"With the current generation, writing on the Internet as part of a blog is even more effective than private writing intended for the eyes of the writer only," noted Dr. Miren Buniel-Nissim and Prof. Ezi Barak who conducted the study
Writing a blog helps teenagers in social-emotional distress deal with the difficulty and improve their self-esteem, according to a new study conducted at the University of Haifa. "The therapeutic value of writing, especially writing in a personal diary, which in its familiar version was written 'for the drawer', was already known in the past. However, from our research it becomes clear that for the current generation, expressive writing on the Internet in the framework of a blog is even more effective than private writing intended for the eyes of the writer only", stated Dr. Miren Buniel-Nissim and Prof. Ezi Barak who conducted the study.
As mentioned, previous studies have already found that keeping a personal diary helps teenagers who suffer from emotional and social difficulties to strengthen their self-image and cope better with the difficulties. The present study sought to examine several other aspects of writing: the subject of the writing (about the difficulty or on general topics), the space in which the writing is done (on the Internet or on a computer for the writer's eyes only) and the effect of the interactivity between the writer and readers (the possibility of reader reactions or the blocking of the possibility). For this purpose, 161 adolescents aged 14-17 with emotional-social difficulties were located out of 1356 adolescents who answered a questionnaire to examine the difficulty.
The participants were randomly divided into six groups: in the first two groups they were asked to manage a personal blog that would deal with their hardships (in one group the writing was in a blog open to comments and in the second group in a blog closed to comments); In the other two groups, the participants were asked to maintain a personal blog that would deal with general issues (one group in a blog open to comments and a second group in a closed blog); Another group was of participants who wrote a diary on the personal computer; A sixth group consisted of participants who did not write anything and served as a control group. As part of the study, the participants were asked to write (keeping personal anonymity) at least twice a week, for 10 weeks. The writing in the blogs was conducted under surveillance and supervision to prevent offensive comments. Questionnaires to examine their social-emotional difficulty, social behavior and self-image were sent before the intervention, after it and after two additional months for follow-up. Also, a linguistic and content analysis of the writing transcripts will be done.
The findings show that writing in a blog is more effective in reducing the emotional-social difficulty compared to writing in a personal diary and compared to the control group who did not write at all. In addition, among the groups who wrote in the blog, those who wrote about the social-emotional difficulty showed greater improvement than those who wrote about general issues, while the group who wrote about the difficulty in the open blog for comments from the readership showed the greatest relief in their situation: both in terms of improvement in their feelings and in terms of their behavior the social
According to the researchers, the research shows that the blog embraces within itself the benefits of expressive writing, which allows venting of feelings, relief, thought organization and expression, as well as the benefits of exposure on the Internet which places the individual within an egalitarian social system that provides feedback, support and offers of help. "The boy or girl who suffers from social-emotional difficulties and writes a blog on the subject, benefits from the very act of writing but also from the very feedback of the readers who break through their loneliness and help in dealing with the difficulty", they concluded.
