"The findings suggest that students with poor mental health may be greater users of SNSs."
Being a teenager is like being extruded out of a rigid nozzle into the mold of what dysfunctional adults think a functional adult is like. The process itself compromises the child's development.
This study will be used as fodder to make the nozzle more rigid, the mold more byzantine. Give the child no escape. They must become a proper adult.
I understand some people want schools as daycare, but separate that out.
Also:
>2015
>MySpace
Hmm?
1: Cost of tuition for 2 kids covers teacher's salary, and other parents are interested enough I could easily turn a profit if desired
Child-rearing is a hard problem.
What I find concerning is that overall Internet/computer use isn't a measure in the study. The conclusion ("health service providers should monitor SNSs more to provide support to youth") seems reasonable, but it isn't going to be enough to cover all the ways a kid could demonstrate a cry for help (e.g. tumblr blogs, fanfic involving people from school).
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zosQ90T3srs/UeqiEbif-kI/AAAAAAAAB...
"The cross-sectional nature of the data precludes evaluation of temporality and causality of the observed relationship between use of SNSs and mental health problems."
So, when the press run with "Social media causes brain damage in children, think of the children!", remember what the paper actually says.
Personally, I think from anecdotal experience that heavy SN use fucks you up no end, but these findings don't prove this.
Now imagine your entire friend network is nonstop angst. I'd go mad, too.
It could be a just-so story, but I think overuse of SNSs allows our social skills to atrophy. The brain repurposes structures that go underused, and the structures that maintain one's face-to-face social functioning are no different.
Maintaining relationships in realspace is different than maintaining them in the async-y & memetic environment of cyberspace. Of course there is granularity--one can have a healthy analog&digital relationship, but if a SNS connection is a part of an individual's requirement for a friendship, then there is probably some deficit the individual is unaware of.
I'd also argue that this is symptomatic of the growing pains heavy internet users experience in their adolescence-to-young-adult stage. The group self-selects for introverts who have a preexisting difficulty with social interaction. However, we all require some social interaction (analog or digital), to greater and lesser extents, and so it perpetuates.
Books and art end up being a better outlet, but in my experience that's a discovery which people can only make for themselves.
My bet: before the end of next month someone will cite it on HN as evidence that social network cause poor functioning.
The social media we consume has been very precisely tuned for our consumption preferences. If you're not particularly motivated, you might be inclined to gravitate towards easy to consume media. Social media would likely be near the top of that list. So heavy users, would likely also be the lowly motivated producers.
Simply adding a noisy background to my Facebook feed (a sunset, really) made it so I spent about half the time I used to there. I also changed all the hues of blue to be red.
I don't seem to mindlessly surf Facebook now.
They tailor those internet "drugs" very well and messing with a few values will remove a lot of the addiction. It's some pretty interesting psychology that is going on and social media won't hesitate to manipulate us in order to get more ads view.
