When I asked some of my teacher colleagues what their thoughts were on journaling, I got a lot of interesting and varied responses. I promised I wouldn’t share their thoughts as part of my inquiry but one of them asked me this question:

Does Twitter count?

Naturally, I went to Twitter to see what other people were saying about journaling…

After doing a few journaling searces in the Twitterverse it seems clear that there is no solid consensus about whether or not tweeting counts as journaling. However, there does seem to be a consistent thread linking journaling to therapy, counseling, and mental well-being which led me to ponder how journaling can reduce stress and anxiety and promote positive mental health? This time I decided not to search on Twitter for evidence but rather went searching for scholarly research. Here is a video of me explaining my search process

After searching in the UVic library summons, I did find research that supports that gratitude journal writing can support positive mental health. Here is a quote from the abstract from one article I found:

About 4 weeks as well as 12 weeks after the conclusion of the writing intervention, participants in the gratitude condition reported significantly better mental health than those in the expressive and control conditions, whereas those in the expressive and control conditions did not differ significantly.

Y. Joel Wong, Jesse Owen, Nicole T. Gabana, Joshua W. Brown, Sydney McInnis, Paul Toth & Lynn Gilman (2018)

Back to my original question does Twitter count as journaling? It seems like it might not matter what medium you use as long as you are expressing gratitude. I’m already thinking that my next post will try and compare journaling with paper and pen vs. keyboard and social media. Stay tuned!