Danger online: Perils of revealing every intimate moment by Carol Midgley and James Harkin

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter - all are forums in which people are suddenly prepared to share anything from heartbreak, marital discord and a diagnosis of chlamydia to what kind of new stair carpet they are getting.
Even celebrities, who you might think would have enough public exposure, cannot seem to resist the extra fix of performing to an audience.

Pamela Briggs, Professor of Psychology at Northumbria University, whose research interest is in computer-mediated communication, says that people compensate for the fact that they don't get the complex interaction of face-to-face conversation by putting more into their e-mails and blogs. And it tends to be “the sparser the medium the richer the revelations”, she says.
We disclose more on e-mail and new media, but we also feel that we are somehow detached from it. “But it can be a dangerous thing because you don't get the feedback from them. People need to understand the impact that they are having.”
Read more...

Source: Times Online, UK