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Health

A Blog as Therapy for Teenagers Pamela Paul

The New York Times January 27, 2012

498 words

The socio-emotional difficulties that adolescents go through, seem to be soothed by the therapeutic value of diary-keeping for teenage girls and boys. But according to a new study, when teenagers detail their woes onto a blog, the therapeutic value is even greater.

Is that why Facebook is so popular among adolescents? Was that even the cause of Zuckerberg's greatest innovation idea?

A study, published in the journal Psychological Services and conducted by Meyran Boniel-Nissim and Azy Barak, found the engagement with an online community allowed by the blog format made it more effective in relieving the writer's social distress than a private diary would be.

How many of us can relate to it? The constant social red's posts of people's hourly, or even more often than that, about our "status", better interpreted as "emotional status".

According to the study conducted by Barak and Boiel-Nissim, the greatest improvement in mood occurred among those bloggers who wrote about their problems and allowed commenters to respond.

Will the so innovative, technological, and modern social reds replace psychologists?