Research has long backed the therapeutic   value of diary-keeping for teenage girls and boys.But according to a new study, when teenagers detail their sadness onto a blog, the therapeutic value is even greater.Blogging, it seems, can be good for you. The study, published in the journal Psychological Services and conducted by Meyran Boniel-Nissim and Azy Barak, psychology professors at the University of Haifa, Israel, found the contact with an online community through a blog made it more effective in relieving the writer's social anxiety than a private diary would be. To track teenagers' experiences with blogging, the researchers randomly surveyed high school students in Israel and selected 161 of them who exhibited some level of social anxiety or stress.The teenagers, who averaged 15 years old, said they had difficulty making new friends or relating to their existing friends. The teenagers were divided into six groups.The first two groups were asked to blog about their social difficulties, with one group asked to open their posts to comments.The second two groups were asked to blog about whatever struck their adolescent fancy; again, with one group allowing comments.All four groups were told to write in their blogs at least twice a week.As a control, two more groups were told to keep either an old-fashioned print diary or to do nothing at all. All of their blog records were then read through by four psychologists to determine the authors'   social and emotional state.In all the groups, the greatest improvement in mood occurred among those bloggers who wrote about their problems and allowed commenters to respond. Interestingly, the commenters on the blogs were quite supportive."The only kind of surprise we had was that almost all comments made by readers were very positive and constructive in trying to offer support for anxious bloggers," Dr.Barak wrote in an e-mail. In the most improved group, the bloggers   _  .
wrote at most twice a week told others whatever they wanted about themselves communicated with readers about their troubles made their social difficulties known to researchers only