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Teens' Blogging Shows Little Risky Behavior

A new Ohio State University study of 100 teen bloggers from around the US found that a majority used blogs to develop relationships with their peers and build a sense of community, rather than to admit misbehavior.

The research has appeared in the current issue of the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal.

According to Dawn Anderson-Butcher, associate professor of social work at Ohio State, the findings suggests that blogging could be used therapeutically to help troubled teens express themselves in positive ways.

Anderson-Butcher and her students analyzed blog posts from the public Web site Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/) for a month, to find out whether teens blogged about risky behaviors, such as skipping school, doing drugs, or having sex.

The researchers found most teens in the study blogged about positive behaviors, such as studying, participating in school activities, spending time with family, and going to church. Anderson-Butcher said: "We looked at every quote, and the kids wrote about very few problem behaviors.

"They showed a lot of creative expression through poetry, lyrics and song. It was very exciting-and for me, positive-to see the typical developmental activities that they were writing about in their blogs."

While the researchers couldn't know whether parents were supervising the Xanga blogs used in this study, the teens were clearly writing blog entries as messages to their peers.

Among the most common positive activities the teens described were playing video games (65 percent); watching television (45 percent); doing homework (40 percent); going to lessons, such as music, dance, or martial arts (38 percent); browsing the Internet (29 percent); and participating in faith-based activities (22 percent).

Anderson-Butcher said even the teens' most common complaint - boredom (65 percent) - was not such a bad thing if they were blogging about it instead of engaging in risky behaviors.

Source: sifynews
http://sify.com/news/teens-blogging-shows-little-risky-behaviour-news-international-kdzp4ijciie.html