Blogging Helps Teenagers Overcome Social Anxiety

Have you ever kept a personal diary about your feelings and problems related to social anxiety? Did it make you feel better? New research published in the APA journal Psychological Services suggests that going a step further and blogging about your difficulties online might be the key to improvement.

The study, conducted by Meyran Boniel-Nissim, PhD and Azy Barak, PhD, investigated the impact of blogging on 161 high school students in Israel. Students were included in the study if they showed some level of social anxiety, trouble making friends, or difficulty relating to others.

The teens were assigned to one of six possible conditions: four experimental and two control. Bloggers were required to blog at least twice a week for 10 weeks.

The conditions were as follows:

1. Blogged about their social anxiety and had the blog open to comments.
2. Blogged about their social anxiety with the blog closed to comments.
3. Blogged about any topic and had the blog open to comments.
4. Blogged about any topic with the blog closed to comments.
5. Wrote in a private diary.
6. Did not do any writing.

Results of the study showed significant improvement in self-esteem, social behaviors, social anxiety and emotional distress for those who blogged versus those who did not. Students who wrote about their social anxiety and those whose blogs were open to comments fared the best. In general comments from the community were supportive and positive.

I think there is another interesting point to be made about this research. Blogs about personal experiences with social anxiety can help more than just those who are writing them. There is a good chance some of the readers of those blogs, and most specifically the commenters, were probably also helped to read that someone else felt the same way as them. It seems as though putting that information out there is a win-win for everyone.

What do you think? Would blogging about your social anxiety make you feel better or worse?

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