Blogging is good for your health

March 3, 2005 | By Duncan | Filed Under News

Blogging is good for your health, according to a press release titled the “Brain of a Blogger” from two doctors, Fernette Eide M.D. and Brock Eide M.D. M.A. of Eide Neurolearning Blog:

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
First, there are blogs and there are…well, blogs. The best of blogs are rich in ideas and promote active exchange and critique. Rather than creating closed communities of like-minded troglodytes, these best blogs foster conversation, interactions with other blogs and other information sources, and invite feedback from their readers. Posts can form “threads” or links to other Web materials where readers can examine primary source material or articles that offer competing ideas and views. Blogs that follow this format are far from simple substitutes for television or video games. In fact, they are an ideal format for promoting critical and analytical thinking.

Because blogs are text-based, bloggers must write and visitors must read (rather than passively view) the postings. In research comparing newspaper and television news, public policy experts have previously found that consumers are far more likely to question what they read than what they see in pictures or on TV. There are several likely reasons for this: First, text can be assimilated in a self-paced fashion, allowing time for analysis and reflection. Second, words must–by their very nature–be analyzed, organized, and interpreted before they can be understood, providing more time for critical reflection. In contrast, pictures and music have more direct access to brain areas dealing with emotion and motivation, thereby potentially avoiding or even subverting reason and reflection. Third, pictures and music not only have the potential to alter our interpretations of the words we hear, but can actually alter our perceptions of the words we believe we have heard. Because our perceptions are formed by combining our sensory input with contextual cues from other inputs or stored memories, strongly arousing visual or sound images have a profound ability to alter the words we hear. This is the reason behind Reagan aide Michael Deaver’s famous statement to CBS’s Lesley Stahl that he didn’t mind what CBS said about Reagan on TV, so long as any voiceovers were accompanied by pictures of the President standing in front of a flag. Blogs, with their text-based format, tend to avoid the more manipulative aspects of visually-embedded media.

2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
To remain popular with readers, blogs must be updated frequently. This constant demand for output promotes a kind of spontaneity and ‘raw thinking’–the fleeting associations and the occasional outlandish ideas–seldom found in more formal media. (Fortunately, the permanence and easily searchable nature of archived posts helps maintain some sense of decorum.) Blogging technology itself fosters this kind of spontaneity, since blogging updates can be posted with just a few clicks whenever a new thought or interesting Internet tidbit is found. Blogging is ideally suited to follow the plan for promoting creativity advocated by pioneering molecular biologist Max Delbruck. Delbruck’s “Principle of Limited Sloppiness” states we should be sloppy enough so that unexpected things can happen, but not so sloppy that we can’t find out that it did. Raw, spontaneous, associational thinking has also been advocated by many creativity experts, including the brilliant mathematician Henri Poincare who recommended writing without much thought at times “to awaken some association of ideas.”

3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
Recent international surveys have shown that students in the United States have fallen far behind most of their first world peers in problem solving and critical thinking. This fall has coincided with a shameful decline in school-based instruction in critical analysis, rhetoric, and persuasive writing. However because professionals like attorneys, philosophers, and academicians run many excellent blogs, we all can benefit from their intellectual rigor, and their use of analogical thinking when communicating to the common world of the blogosphere.

Back-and-forth blog-based exchanges between experts also provide a unique opportunity for young thinkers to witness and evaluate arguments from analogy on an ongoing basis, and to develop their own abilities to think analogically.

4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
Because blogs link many facts and arguments in branching “threads” and webs, and append primary source materials and reference works, they foster deeper understanding and exposure to quality information. In turn these sources can seed other creative projects.

5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
Research using the Lemelson-MIT Invention index found that invention is best fostered in solitude (66%); yet other research has shown the beneficial effects of brainstorming with a community of intellectual peers. So blogging may combine the best of “working by yourself” and “working with other people.” Bloggers have solitary time to plan their posts, but they can also receive rapid feedback on their ideas. The responses may open up entirely new avenues of thought as posts circulate and garner comments.

Their conclusion: “it looks as if blogging will be very good for our brains. It holds enormous potential in education, and it could take societal communication and creative exchange onto a whole new level.”

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Comments

13 Responses to “Blogging is good for your health”

  1. The Newest Industry on March 3rd, 2005 8:50 pm

    Blogging is your Mental Workout
    Good news: Blogging is good for the brain! [here]

    Of course, the way I have been feeling lately…I think I have hit the wall.

  2. NIF on March 3rd, 2005 10:00 pm

    Getting Better …
    Today’s dose of NIF - daily News, Interesting & Funny

  3. Pirate's Cove on March 3rd, 2005 10:09 pm

    Blogging is good for your health
    Via the Blog Herald comes an article that states that what we do is actually good for us. Doesn’t address what looking at a PC screen does to our eyes, but, it is in fact written by 2 Doctors of

  4. Inside Allan's Mind on March 4th, 2005 1:00 am

    Blogging is Good, and Good For You
    Blogging is good for your health, according to a press release titled the “Brain of a Blogger� from two doctors, Fernette Eide M.D. and Brock Eide M.D. M.A. of Eide Neurolearning Blog.From The Blog Herald. Another few months of this

  5. TurboBlogger.com » Health effects of blogging on March 4th, 2005 1:25 am

    […] Health effects of blogging

    5 reasons why blogging is good for your health [The Blog Herald]

    Category: General   […]

  6. Sumedh Mungee on March 4th, 2005 6:29 am

    Blogging is good for health

    Research using the Lemelson-MIT Invention index found that invention is best fostered in solitude (66%); yet other research has shown the beneficial effects of brainstorming with a community of intellectual peers. So blogging may combine the best…

  7. OracleAppsBlog on March 4th, 2005 11:14 am

    Blogging is good for your health - now I have an excuse!
    Check out this article entitled "Brain of a Blogger" from two doctors, Fernette Eide M.D. and Brock Eide M.D. M.A. of Eide Neurolearning Blog (is this blog different or what? - check out all the brain scans!). It lists the following 5 rea…

  8. Ghost of a flea on April 9th, 2005 11:25 pm

    Brain of a Blogger

    Blogging is good for your health. Research using the Lemelson-MIT Invention index found that invention is best fostered in solitude (66%); yet other research has shown the beneficial effects of brainstorming with a community of intellectual peers. So b…

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    […] pplied - to the MS-DOS paternity suit. What triggered this completely random post? As the Blog Herald puts it (via Sumedh) - […]

  10. healther on October 23rd, 2005 9:57 pm

    This is a very good news to all bloggers. Not only that their crafts are justified, they also get a boost from health experts. As a blogger, I am not expecting this information. Still, I will continue on making blog no matter what consequences await me.

  11. The Blogging Tories - Blogging Links on May 28th, 2006 9:54 am

    […] tive … A step in the right direction. Blue Blogging Soapbox. Right in Canada … ” Blogging is good for your health The Blog Herald: more blog news more o […]

  12. Computer Internet Resources » Blog Archive » Most blogs are boring, overblown and don’t make on November 20th, 2007 8:17 pm

    […] Blogging is ideally suited to follow the plan for promoting creativity advocated … TurboBlogger.com ” Health effects of blogging on March 4th, 2005 1:25 am … Read More… […]

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