And if you ever need self validation / Just meet me in the alley by the railway station
- Morrissey

MySpace users who blog are more prone to distress, self-loathing and ranting than MySpace users who don't blog, a study has found.

Who would have guessed?

"Intending bloggers were more psychologically distressed and more likely to use venting and self-blame to cope with this stress than were non-bloggers," report Professors Baker and Moore, at the Swunburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia.

"Since intending bloggers were more psychologically distressed than non-bloggers, it is unsurprising that they more frequently used the unhelpful coping strategy of self-blame."

The academics canvassed 124 users, and the results are published in an article entitled "Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New MySpace Users by Their Intention to Blog" in Cyber Psychology and Behaviour.

The theraputic aspects of blogging have been noted before (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/22/blogging_is_therapy/).

"Intending bloggers were significantly more discontented with their number of online and face-to-face friends," add Baker and Moore.

From this conclusion, the authors leap to this puzzling recommendation: "This finding suggests that blogging might be used to increase social networking and improve existing social-support structures."

Er, what? Surely the social-support structures work if you can get the patients to leave the house - and once they're blogging, they have less time for real interaction. And if no one reads the blogs, isn't the self-loathing likely to increase?

Also, since the internet is symmetrical - blogging could be a way for non-bloggers to avoid people with low self-esteem - again, increasing the cycle of misery. Sadly, this isn't explored.

You can see the findings here (http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2007.9930) [pdf, 72kb]. ®

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