What is already out there on this?

For the assigned literature review, my search seemed so open-ended. I have been focusing on intimacy among strangers, deep connections to unknown people. Not very much has been written on this. I read a few things on social psychology, some editorials, even a Harvard Med. School study on happiness, and found a few things that gave me something to work with.

The first one I want to mention is from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Their study called "Internet Communication and its Relation to Well-Being" comes to the conclusion that adolescents who frequently communicate with strangers online have a lower state of well-being. The study seemed thorough and very complex; there were lots of qualitative equations involved. I don't do well with equations.

They managed to account for several factors of the participants' social connections, both online and off-line, so their findings are logical.

Had I not been exploring the PostSecret community for the past several weeks, this study would not have surprised me at all. Growing up, I was always warned about the potential risk of meeting people online. The negative effects of communication with strangers would have seemed common sense and common knowledge then.

But PostSecret does not fit this result. I could not find any studies that suggested an opposite result. Found Magazine and Mortified (both of which have shown evidence of the deep, meaningful connections with strangers that we've come to call the PostSecret Effect) don't fit either.

So what is going on with these sites? What makes these communities an exception to such painstaking quantitative research?
The Harvard study on happiness might give a bit of a clue. The study's title declares its conclusion: "Happiness is a collective -- not just individual -- phenomenon"
The article explains how one persons happiness can spread up to three degrees throughout their social network, therefore, ones happiness may be the result of anyone close to them being happy.

With that conclusion, I'm going to jump to a conclusion. But here's my thought process to it... (so more of a hop-scotch to a conclusion?)

1. Happiness is a collective phenomenon that dissipates throughout a social network.
2. Online communities provide a medium for more communication among social networks.
3. So you're more likely to know if one of your friends is happy, which should have a positive effect on your happiness (Harvard study).
4. Anonymous online communities reveal the emotions of strangers.
5. But it's revealed in a raw, honest, un-fakeable way that lets you feel a raw, honest, un-fakeable connection.
6. So you're exposed to a very large amount of happiness that you feel connected to and are therefore just a bit happier. Just a bit.

I think I need to continue my search for relevant publications on this topic. Yet it seemed important to comment on the exception that PS is from the research I uncovered.

Any thoughts?
-Katie