A recently published Blog Trends Survey, sponsored by AOL / Time Warner, provides some evidence that people often seek therapeutic effects from blogging. The press release reports that
- Nearly 50% of respondents say they write a blog because it serves as a form of self-therapy.
- One-third of bloggers write about self-help and self-esteem topics.
- Fifty-four percent like to share their thoughts and feelings with others, and 43% like to chronicle their life and interests.
- In times of need or high anxiety, one-out-of-three people (31%) say they turn to either writing in their blog or reading the blogs of other people who are experiencing similar issues; that’s six times as many people who prefer to seek help and counseling from a professional (5%). The No. 1 answer was seeking advice from family and friends: 32% vs. 31% who turn to blogs.
The report also claims that bloggers tend to blog "for themselves", which I interpret as meaning that they are blogging for their own benefit without regard to whether others are reading their blogs, or what kind of impact that might have. However, I don’t see much evidence to support this claim, and I suppose it is a difficult claim to support. I claim that I blog primarily for myself, but I do know that people have read some of my blog posts in the past, and some may read them in the future, and this does have an influence my blogging practice. I’m not sure how I would demonstrate this, though.
Unfortunately, while the study provides evidence that people seek therapeutic effects through blogging, it does not say much about whether or how people find the therapeutic effects they are seeking. While journaling is therapeutic in its own right, the opportunities for interactions — supportive and otherwise — that are created when one embraces vulnerability by posting one’s journal entries in a public forum (and inviting comments) add an important dimension to the potential therapeutic benefits to blogging. I would like to know more about whether people find or create online support groups through their blogging, and what impacts this has. The report does include some survey findings that point in this direction:
- Sixty-one percent of bloggers feel that posting a comment on another person’s blog is the "right thing to do."
- One-in-five bloggers (23%) worry about offending people in their blogs.
- More than three-out-of-five (65%) of bloggers admit to feeling disappointed when people post negative or abusive comments to their blogs.
However, I’m interested in how open people are willing to be in their blogs, how often their openness is rewarded or punished, and whether they have become more or less open over time based on their blogging experiences … essentially exploring how blogging addresses one of the dimensions of Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s Invitation:
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.