How personal should a personal site be? - Manuel Morale

Manuel Morale recently wrote about how personal should a personal site be. I for one don't get very personal on here or other forms of social media intentionally. On occasion I'll share an opinionated post tagged as status in my blog. Going through them, however, I can see they're still not very personal.

Manuel writes:

Every time I share something that’s a bit more personal, a few emails from strangers inevitably trickle in and they all share this sense of relief in knowing other people out there are struggling with the same problems they’re facing. And so I’m wondering if I should be doing it more. Maybe there’s value in being vulnerable on the web sometimes.

Reading that paragraph reminded me of an academic article which talked about the effects social media has on mental health, in particular Instagram. This is more of an extreme example as people tend to only share the best or best fabricated versions of themselves.

In particular, Instagram users who engage in digital status seeking (looking for popularity online) and social comparison (evaluating oneself in relation to others) tend to experience negative psychological outcomes. Such behaviors have been linked to increases in depressive symptoms, social anxiety, and body image concerns across age groups, as well as decreases in self-esteem (Sherlock, M., & Wagstaff, D. L., Psychology of Popular Media, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2019; Cohen, R., et al., Body Image, Vol. 23, 2017).

Working towards a curated feed can be beneficial or at the very least less harmful.

As those findings imply, Instagram users can attempt to curate their feeds to be less harmful, for instance by muting or unfollowing accounts that post idealized content and following those that promote diversity.

In one experiment led by Fardouly and Rachel Cohen, PhD, a clinical psychologist based in Australia, women who viewed “body positive” posts—which promote acceptance of diverse body types—reported improved mood, body satisfaction, and body appreciation (New Media & Society, Vol. 21, No. 7, 2019).

With that being said I don't believe person websites cause such harm, they're not designed to suck as much time with doom scrolling as engaging with them is more intentional. I do see the benefit of being able to relate or feel included when reading personal entries and there are many bloggers who do a good job in sharing just that.