Confessing to Strangers?

In chapter 12 of Alone Together, Turkle examines confessional websites, where people can go online and anonymously submit confessions about their deepest and darkest secret.  When I first read this chapter, I was in agreement with the benefits presented by such an outlet.  People who had no one to go to or who were to afraid to speak up to the people they were close to for fear of ostracism or disapproval had the chance to get things off their chest.  The confessions were open to discussion by any other visitor to the site.  However, once I finished the chapter, I no longer agreed with this.  For one, these already unstable and conflicted people are open to the many times harsh replies of anonymous strangers.  Secondly, as a reader of these confessions, we are totally helpless.  We read these horrible problems and situations yet there is nothing we can do to help, which I find, as Turkle also did, quite unsettling.  I think that these confessional sites are good ideas in theory, but in reality, they do more harm than good.