“I stay away from ‘free content’ Web sites or anonymous blogs when it comes to trusting the information I’m reading. Such sites can be entertaining, but rarely would I trust them with any health or mental health question.”
Vic said she looks at blogging as a way to reach out to those seeking insight into the feelings they’re having. She, like many bloggers, doesn’t claim to provide the most recent or relevant information or say her writing is a substitute for genuine counseling. What they do, however, is use the growing new medium to potentially reach out to millions who might be going through the same experience.
“One reason I am simply known as Vic is because I wanted to be honest,” she said. “People in crisis can spot a fake. …There’s safety in anonymity. One can actually speak from the heart with impunity. This is quite liberating. So, I think a divorce blog like mine would have an overall effect on ‘healing.’
OTHERS LIKE YOU ONLINE
“Experts, like counselors and psychologists, are valuable, of course, because they put things in perspective, but they can’t give that first-hand account.”
Currently, there are more than 12,000 blogs and about 90 million web pages containing the word “divorce” cataloged by Google.com. As the population continues to connect to the internet (currently about 60 percent of all homes have some kind of access) and with about 1 million new marriages a year ending in divorce, there are more and more eyeballs to attract and e-mail boxes to fill. For marriage reform activists like Maggie Gallagher, that means she can reach a lot more people than in the days of letter writing, manual dialing and doorbells.
“I think it would be very difficult for me to do what I do without the Internet,” said Gallagher, who runs a Washington think tank
www.marriagedebate.com dedicated to disseminating information about divorce and its effects on society. “As a communication tool, it can't be beat as far as making it easy and relatively inexpensive. I’m somewhat of an introvert so if I had to make all the phone calls or maintain all the relationships I do with e-mail, it would be really difficult for me.”
But does she think the sudden availability of information – everything from the latest statistics to reviews of divorce attorneys or strategies for hiding money from a spouse – will have an effect on the divorce rate or even encourage people to go that route? “I don't think the Internet is adding anything to it,” Gallagher said.
“Generally speaking, people get divorced because of things that are happening in their living room. They’re more influenced (by) what they learn when they (talk to) their best friend or their sister… or by what their counselor or their clergy says. I don't think the Internet is any better than those at disseminating the risks or information about divorce.”
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