Blogging's Good For Your Health

"It was as if they were saying 'I'm going to do this blogging and it's going to help me'."

And it seemed to do the trick, as the researchers' second study shows.

This study, which is yet to be published, was conducted two months later. The researchers sent out questionnaires to the same group of MySpace users; this time 59 responded. Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.

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."

Moore acknowledges this is early research and hopes to follow a larger group of people for a longer period time to test some of the research findings.

Related Links:

Discovery News blog: What the Tech?

How Stuff Works: Blogging Basics

Swinburne University of Technology