Is blogging a "safe" way to wean yourself from social networking sites?

Have you thought about walking away from the computer or deleting your accounts?

Yes. I think it really helps a lot to blog instead of social networking.
I blog myself – about beauty and stuff cause I have a breauty channel on Youtube.

I think it’d be a great idea! Are you thinking of a blog that you’d show the people you have on your social networking site? If so, it’d be a good way to not “hide” and show them how you feel. If not, it’d still be a good way to get out those feelings.

Depends on your goal. I gave up on social networks when it became too easy for bad “ex” to find me, went for anonymous chat rooms and a blog under a new identity (which nobody here will ever read because it would wreck my rep) and then to fluther, where I don’t have to give out anything personal but I can interact with a lot of smart people.
If you have a few you’d like to keep up with but not visible to the world at large, I recommend the fridge

If you find social networks really addictive, then maybe blogging will help you to stop it. However, blogging has its own addictive quality, too. You might not be interacting so much with other people, but blogging still opens doors to readers and online friends.

Try Posterous, if you want.

I don’t see the connection between social network sites and blogging. @BarnacleBill has the best answer which is to just get up from the chair and do something else.

I think you should do further analysis of your motives for doing this. You say you want to hide away from them, but why? Did you make a mistake? Piss people off? Are you being bullied? Is it just too high school for you? You “waste” time?

You also should look at why you liked the sites. Did you connect with people? Talk? Make friends? Share information? Look at these things in detail.

Then come up with a list of what you want to do. If it’s a blog, I assume you want to express yourself. About what? Do you want any response? How often will you blog?

The answers to these questions will help you figure out what you want and whether you need to change. It may be you only need to cut back from social networking, or only do certain things. It may also be that you need to cut back and go completely offline. No blog. Just typing at home or wherever.

Good luck!

I find that blogs have the tendency to be a bit more thought-out than social networking. Instead of tweeting or updating your Facebook status with whatever interesting thing comes to mind (whether it’s important or not), you have the chance to express your thoughts more fully.

However, blogs can be really obnoxious too, depending on the subject matter. Some blogs are really great, and these ones have a few similar traits:

-They have a clear direction and theme.
-The subject matter is interesting.
-They are well designed/organized.
-They are well written.
This is a generalization, of course. I’m sure there are some blogs that don’t meet all these qualities and are still popular. But I haven’t come across a really well-known blog that is just people talking about everyday trifles.

If you’re just going to make a random blog to talk about whatever you want in a stream-of-consciousness style, most likely people won’t want to read it. There’s nothing wrong with having an online journal for you and your close friends to see, of course; but you probably won’t become Internet-famous with it. It all depends, like @wundayatta said, on what your goal is with blogging.

I’ve also seen an episode of House where a patient was so engrossed in her blogging that she tried to base her decision of whether or not to get serious medical treatment with huge consequences on the opinion of her blog followers. And since obviously everything on TV is true, you know that this is something that could potentially happen to you.

I was just thinking about this same thing a couple of days ago! :) I don’t mind social network sites, i use them when i’m a little bored behind my computer or need a few minutes break from a tedious job i’m doing on the computer. Sometimes it takes up too much time because i don’t always have the discipline to just switch it off when i’m discussing something interesting or whatever.
But, i’ve recently started a blog too, but a crafty blog, about my crafts (which i plan to begin selling sometime when i’m ready), and that definitely takes up more of my spare time so that i don’t “waste” it on essentially non-productive social sites.